When writing songs lately, I’ve felt… listless.  Uninspired.  My ideas seem ‘weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable’.  I don’t give up, but… isn’t moving ahead with these seemingly dull ideas a waste of time?

I tend to write songs in bunches.  I know not everyone works this way (and I’m not recommending it), but during a writing session, I work on one song for a while, then another, then another… or maybe I’ll try to start something new…  Sometimes I finish a song in a sprint, but it’s more common to get one started, hopefully get the important pieces in place… and then visit it for a half hour one day, 45 minutes another day, until it feels right (or until I have a deadline to record or perform the song, which is always the most effective method for getting something finished).  I like getting different perspectives at different times.

So… lately I’ve been circling around my latest bunch… I don’t think they’re bad exactly… but I wish they were exciting me more… a lot more.

Then I remembered… Yes… I’ve felt this way before… gone through periods like this; quite a few times actually.  And it turned out to have almost nothing to do with the quality of what I was working on…  As long as I kept working on the songs, they had gotten better.  And – amazing to me – I now view some of those songs, written at those times, to be among my better ones.

Once again, this reminds me that, when I’m writing, how I feel about what I’m writing can be very misleading.  Most of the time I’m better off just plowing ahead and seeing what turns up…. and judging it later when my mood is different.  My gig is to keep at it.  As John Cleese said (I’ve quoted this many times), ‘There’s no telling what drivel will lead to the breakthrough.’

So this current period I’m in… maybe most of what I’ve got is a lot of crap.  Maybe one good song will emerge… or a few… or none.  Or maybe something dull will catch fire.  It’s happened before.  There must be a reason these ideas attracted me in the first place!

I’m committed to my practice as a songwriter, so my job is to show up and write.  The quality will always be somewhat uneven.  My emotions will always be somewhat uneven.  I’m panning for gold.  I’ll only find it if I’m down on my knees in the dirt with the pan.

“I feel like I’ve made almost all the mistakes. I haven’t made the mistake of quitting entirely, and this is what saved me.” – playwright Marsha Norman