Ideas and inspiration are indispensable, but for most writers putting in the hours is how one learns to be a songwriter.  There are very rare exceptions… and I hate to say it but… like me, you’re probably not one of them.  Putting in the time is how we improve, how that standout song happens.

I’ve been a musician all of my adult life.  This time = improvement formula is something musicians know well.  If you don’t put in your many hours in the practice room, you’re not going to be able to play at a high level.  At least at some point, you just have to bear down and do the dirty work.

Practicing a musical instrument involves a lot of time, a lot of rote repetition – you have to know your chords, scales, train your ear, etc.  A lot of it is doing the same thing you did yesterday, just maybe a little faster, or slower, more consciously…  Ideally it’s focused and concentrated repetition, but you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day.  Any musician will tell you that practicing isn’t enough.  You need on-the-job experience to become a professional.  When you practice, you’re mostly preparing to play. You do the reinventing of the wheel on the bandstand or in the studio.

As songwriters… reinventing the wheel is our job!  Songwriting is always creating, involving a lot of problem-solving and custom-fitting.  Your experience, your many previous hours, can give you confidence (sometimes misplaced, which is probably a good thing) that you can find a solution somewhere out there – you’ve found your way out of other tangled jungles before… maybe you can figure out this one, maybe there’s an answer somewhere.  So you don’t give up on the song (until it expires in your arms).

Also, by putting in the time, you write your way through the bad songs and the more derivative songs into what hopefully are songs that are more ‘yours’, ones that only you can write.  This is similar to being a musician – you play your way through your influences, you copy people until the way they play becomes part of you, and then hopefully you shed that skin, or at least some of it, and become more yourself on your instrument.

It’s like growing up in anything; in life.  You incorporate your parents and your teachers.  They’re always part of you, but ideally you grow into being autonomous and individual, keeping what’s right for you, letting go of the rest.

So ultimately songwriting is no different from anything else one wants to do well – family, marriage, job, relationships of all kinds, health, spirituality, anything… they all require concentrated time to get past the superficial into something deeper.  There aren’t many shortcuts.  And writing is inventing… which requires a certain kind of mental endurance that most of us develop only through experience.

So, songwriters, I say be impatiently patient.  Be in a rush to improve… but understand that no matter what your feeling of urgency, it will still take time; probably a lot more than you expect.  Enjoy the small victories, the incremental advances.  Just finishing a song, even if it’s your worst, is a victory in itself.