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How many bad songs have you written? How many bad ideas have you generated? No need to raise your hand. If you’re a successful songwriter, I’m sure it’s enormous. If you haven’t had tremendous success, it’s probably because you’re avoiding this one crucial habit of a successful writer.
Producing bad ideas.
I’ve experienced the opposite before. I sit down to write and I feel inspired. But most of the time, I sit down and crap comes out (no pun intended). Maybe your experience has been the same. What you choose to do in that moment makes all the difference.
Will you give up because of bad ideas or keep writing?
For every 10 bad ideas (or 15 or 20 or 100) will come a diamond in the rough. Mediocre songs come from a songwriter settling on his original ideas and not taking them further.
I know sometimes you just have to let a song rest. RIP. It’s not going anywhere. But I’m of the opinion that our struggle is less about letting go of ideas and more about not generating enough ideas. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say this is the one habit that could save your songwriting. It’s easy to give up on a bad idea or settle on your first idea. Great songwriters do neither. They write and write and write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite some more. But they don’t tweak forever because no one would ever hear their songs.
Where do you go from here? Allow me to challenge you with these questions:
What if you kept writing when you felt like giving up?
What if you co-wrote with someone else?
What if you started writing for one hour everyday?
What if you started leading your songs in a small group setting?
What if you began collecting your ideas everywhere, all the time?
What if you studied the songwriting of artists you love?
What if you asked for honest feedback from a pro?
What if you____________________________?
QUESTION: Have you noticed that it takes a lot of bad song ideas before you develop really good songs? What are some songwriting disciplines that are working for you? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
“What if you didn’t attempt to write down every lyric and lick.”
I find myself at times focusing more on trying to keep track of every idea. I find more creativity comes when I don’t focus so much on trying to keep a tab of the creativity – not discounting the discipline of documentation of “lyrics and licks” by any means.
Jason, that is interesting. So you are suggesting to not focus too much on the method of gathering ideas and just flow more?
Yes, but even more-so just making sure that (as a songwriter and ‘worship leader’) I am focusing first and foremost on singing FOR God and not trying to write down everything (to share with everyone). As I think back… Some of the best songs I’ve sung were ONLY to God. I remember that it was a good song, and that I like the melody, but I never wrote it down or recorded it. In the following moments/days I found myself disappointed that I forgot the melody or lyrics, but the fact that I sang it in the ‘secret place’ to God, and he only heard it….THAT should be enough. I am constantly writing down ideas, but I do find myself to a fault focusing on the ideas rather than the worship. So that is why I’ve taken to the concept of “What if you didn’t attempt to write down every lyric and lick.” (just what I’m personally going through 🙂 )
Thanks for great post and question; it really helps me process my thoughts!
Dude I know how you feel, those times when it’s just for the Lord and sometimes the best stuff comes out and … you can’t remember it later. Sometimes I imagine it was that same heart that led to David pour out that water his mighty men chased down for him (2 Sam:13-17)
Well said, Jason. I think we need to have personal worship time apart from our songwriting time. You’re right. We need moments every day where we simply stand in awe of God and spend time with him. Better songs will come out of that anyway, right?
One brainstorming technique I just did was:
1) Free association
2) Record melody ideas on as Quick time audio Movie
3) I used today’s liturgy from http://www.missionstclare.com/ as a source of inspiration for the text.
Over 20 song ideas generated using this technique in about 30 minutes. Of course they are raw fragments, but some could be decent songs with some work.
This just primes the pump, but when you get in a flow your writing gets more creative.
Try it sometime… 🙂
Cool idea. Never tried this, but I bet it really gets the creative juices flowing.
I carry a molskine pocket size journal with staff paper EVERYWHERE. It’s not for notes or to-do lists, only for song ideas. I hold it during worship. I pull it out in restaurants. It took my five years to fill one, and today I got my second one.
Now that’s a professional right there 🙂 How many songs would you say you finish in a years time? Be interested to know…