It’s hard for most of us songwriters to write a bunch of good songs unless we write a lot of songs. They don’t all come out the way we hope! To get the home runs, you have to get up to bat pretty frequently.

So there needs to be some kind of Habit of Songwriting. A habit is defined as “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up”. (That says it pretty well.)

There has to be some kind of regularity, and also what you might call a healthy dependency, because it meets your inner need to express how you see the world (and, if you’re lucky, your outer need for money too).

Right now, my habit is this: I set aside certain days – some mornings, other afternoons – for writing. I do various different kinds of writing, but songwriting is a regular part of the mix. It’s important to have a chunk of time, because turning something OK into something good, and maybe occasionally turning something good into something great, can be labor-intensive.

In the writing process, I ‘circle around’ songs. Usually – not always – it takes me a while to finish them (unless I have a hard deadline). Once I’ve got a few started, I go from one to the other, tweaking them, trying to gradually improve them. When I get tired of working on one, I move over to another.

This doesn’t work for everyone! Some writers prefer to write one piece at a time, hanging on to it until they wrestle it to the ground. And that’s fine too.

I seem to go through periods where I’m mostly developing new ideas, and then I segue into periods when I focus on finishing (sometimes because I have to bring the new songs to a rehearsal, gig, or recording session). I’ll pick the songs I’m working on that I feel are most worthwhile and I’ll make a concerted effort to wrap them up. Then I start developing a new batch.

Also, the muse doesn’t visit at my convenience. Whenever I have song ideas I write them down or record them – I do my best to have that discipline. These ideas can range from a fragment of a melody to most of a song, depending on what comes to me. A few mornings ago I got a Chorus and 3 Verses of something when I was mostly asleep – I have yet to go back to see what it was.

It’s critical to grab these ideas when they come – they pop into my head randomly and I need to take what my subconscious gives when it gives.

I’ve known and worked with many songwriters, enough to know that for every one there’s a different habit of songwriting. But for each productive one, there is a habit.

Some just write when the spirit moves them. If the spirit moves often enough, and their time is free enough, this can work well.

At the other extreme, some professional songwriters write on a tight schedule. They have appointments with other writers to co-write, they get together, and a song emerges. That’s their habit, and they learn to get something finished, or pretty close to it, in an afternoon or even a few hours – every time. That comes from practice.

There are many other ways. But however you do it, it’s a little like the old Hollywood studio system – churn out the movies on a regular basis and every now and then a ‘Casablanca’ emerges.

The output of even the greatest artists in any field is always uneven. But they need a habit of creation, an (at least somewhat) regular practice, to scale the heights.

What’s your habit, or your challenges with finding one?

Let me know your thoughts in the Comments section below.

And please share on facebook etc. by clicking these tabs: