It’s a truism that the best way to finish a piece of writing is to have a deadline. Duke Ellington said, “All I need to write music is a piano and a deadline.”

It can be a hard deadline – something you’re getting paid for and needs to be in on time. It will get done! It can be a soft deadline – like being in a Songwriting workshop. You won’t get fired or in trouble for not being ready, but knowing that people are waiting to listen to your new creation really helps get a song into presentable shape.

This also goes for having a recording session or gig (or even rehearsal) where you’re presenting a new song.

But what about when there is no deadline? Which is the case most of the time, for most of us.

Even though I’m fairly productive, I’d say I’m on the slow side. Which brings us to my weird approach. You can call it the Lazy Susan ‘method’ of songwriting.

I write in bunches. Somehow I end up, around the same time period, with 5 or 6 song ideas that I feel have enough potential to make them worth bringing to completion, or making the attempt.

So, when I sit down to write, I pick one, whichever one catches my fancy, to work on. I start trying to make the idea better in whatever way occurs to me. Could be the lyric, the melody, the harmony, the structure… I take what I can get. Sometimes I make a lot of progress. Sometimes I make little or even none.

Whatever happens, when I feel burned out on the song – which might take an hour or two or might take 5 minutes – I just move on to the next one in the bunch that seems worth a shot. I just spin the Lazy Susan until I’m out of steam.

If ideas are in short supply that day I might try just messing around, looking for something new. This can be dangerous because (another truism of songwriting) it always easier to start a new song than to finish one. But sometimes I do come up with something I can add to the bunch.

Over days, weeks, months I keep chipping away, making what I hope are improvements, however small, until I don’t think I can make the song any better (or until there’s a deadline).

This doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally write songs in a half hour that are basically complete (not totally finished, but all the important stuff is there – it’s clearly a song). But these are rare, not necessarily better… and I believe they come as a result of sweating over the other 98% of my songs.

I didn’t figure out or plan this so-called ‘method’. It’s just developed over the years. I realize it takes a certain kind of mind (definitely a strange one) to be able to switch around so much and still be able to feel the differences between the songs – to not make all the songs basically the same or too similar (which I don’t think I do…).

At the other extreme there are songwriters, great songwriters, who have to finish one song before they move on to the next. Some write their songs in one sitting… and there’s certainly something about the intensity and focus of writing that way, staying so close to the song’s original spark, that may not be available to a song that’s crafted over time.

As Shakespeare said, “the proof of the pudding’s in the eating”. It doesn’t matter how a good song gets written. It gets written in whatever way and at whatever pace the individual songwriter writes it. What matters is if it works.

Leonard Cohen agonized for months and years in his well-publicized (by him) struggles to finish songs to his satisfaction. Neil Young lights up and writes a few in a day. Bob Dylan writes very fast but then will revisit and rewrite certain songs for years. When Billy Joel or Elton John had to make a record, they’d sit at the piano, knock out the songs in a week or two, and almost everything they wrote made it to the albums. Tom Petty walked around the house with his guitar, playing a new song until it revealed its secrets to him. Jay-Z carries his lyrics around in his head, walks into the studio and spits them into the mic; never writing down a word. A lot of writers, rappers or rapper/singers like Drake and singer/songwriters like Taylor Swift, write lyrics and melodies in the studio while the beat is being put together.

For some writers, spontaneity is the key to the kingdom of creativity. Although it’s likely we start from the same kind of inspiration, others, like me, tend to be slow and methodical in execution (though, like most, I can make it happen on a deadline!).

Honestly, I don’t really question what works for me, or anyone else. If it works, it works.

What works for you?

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