I  just started a 5 week ‘Finish Your Songs’ workshop at my studio. Among other things, every week we look at a different technique or tool that can help in finishing a song. But the deadlines created by the workshop itself – or in any other way – are to me truly the most powerful tool. Most writers will tell you that the greatest spur to production is a deadline.

Of course a tight deadline doesn’t always lead to the best work. Some ideas need to germinate, marinate (and sometimes we need to procrastinate, let’s not forget). But when you have a deadline, and you stick to it, you write something that’s in a form that at least resembles ‘finished’ – it’s not just fragments or a single section. And sometimes it’s really good – much better than expected.

When I have a hard deadline – say something’s going on the air or into post-production and the music has to be in by a certain day and time – I do the best I can and then I have to let go. Naturally, some things are better than others, but everything sounds pretty complete – it goes on the air.

When writing a song, there’s often more flexibility – even if it’s being recorded you can usually go back and redo many things if you think they could be better. But whether it be for a session, gig, rehearsal, whatever, the song has to be at least presentable – maybe not dressed in its finest… but wearing something.

Recently I was reminded of all this when I had a gig with my band. Our rehearsal was five days before the show. For various reasons we hadn’t added anything new in a while and I was excited to bring in some recent songs.

When I started to prepare by going through the new songs I’d been working on for the past few months, I was shocked by their disorganization, by the amount of decisions I had put off about structure, lyric choices, by the unwritten sections, etc. Some songs were ready to go. But in quite a few songs I had thought of as being mostly done there was much more work to do!

I attribute this mostly to lack of deadlines. I’d come to depend on having some new songs every month or two to bring in to the band or to record. Going six months or so without that discipline had let a lot of chaos creep in. In most cases it’s nothing that a little time and focused work won’t remedy (and I am working on them) but still… it’s important to really finish a song – all the way, 100%. And it’s not easy to do!

It’s much easier to stop on the ten yard line and kick a field goal than it is to go for a touchdown. But the real professional, the real craftsman, the real artist, finishes things. I strive for that. And having a deadline is probably the single most effective way to focus the mind on finishing.

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