Near the beginning of most new Songwriting workshops or classes I do, I emphasize this point: ‘There’s Always a Good Reason To NOT Write‘.
I think it’s kind of a universal truth for writers.
Very few of us have people begging for new songs. Most of us lead pretty busy lives. Work, money, family, marriage, children, relationships, friendships, shopping, laundry, eating, sleeping… not to mention relaxing, having fun, movies, books, sports, etc… You get the point – there’s always a good reason to NOT write.
And I do mean good reasons. There’s a lot of not-so-good ones too. but we don’t even have to go there to enumerate many distractions from writing.
But writing time we must have! I’ve often told myself: ‘The shit is not going to write itself!!’ I have to find the time. If I don’t make it a priority, nobody else will…. and my writing will not exist. It will be what I could have done, as opposed to it actually being. A horrible and scary thought to me.
Among the things that have helped my productivity, the main one is simply to make times for writing and hold to those times as best I can. (Deadlines are best to help me finish a song, but that’s different story.)
If I don’t absolutely have to work or have a family or personal commitment, at the same times every week I do my best to turn off the computer, sit down and just… put in some writing time. That’s all I have to do. How it all adds up, I don’t know and I don’t have to worry about when I’m writing. It’s just my time to make stuff up, or to shape, enhance, or finish what I’ve already made up.
By making these times and keeping to them, my writing has turned into a practice – in the same way meditating, exercising, doing yoga, praying, etc., can become a practice. It’s part of my life that helps keep me together… and I also create something that stands apart from me and hopefully has value for some other people as well.
Even this humble blog is a practice: A weekly commitment that I’ve kept for almost a year and a half… that will lead me I know not where.
In this post I’ve written about some of the ways I approach dealing with distraction and procrastination. There are many other ways. But, however we do it, we all need to find ways to get it done amid the tumult of living a life.
It’s helped me to remember that There’s Always a Good Reason To NOT Write…
And then to remember that most of those reasons are not truly important enough to stop me from doing what I need to do.
And then to act on that – and write something.
‘It is wonderful to create’ – Akira Kurasawa