Songwriting Wall – Creating What You Want (Part 2)

Breaking the Wall

This is part 2 of a series of songwriting posts designed to personally break me out of songwriting hell. Part 1 explains what that hell is and why I want out. The link to Part 1 is here.

The beginning of getting out

About a week ago, I got myself to a cafe located in the local town I was in, and sat down facing a wall to have no distractions. After an hour and a half, I came up with many different patterns in my songwriting that may be contributing to my continual negativity during the songwriting process. So far, here are the 16 that I have found:

1. Always writing at night-time
2. Doing lyrics first then music second
3. Using Garageband or my guitar as main instruments
4. Being tempted to create a full band on Garageband before I even have 20 seconds of music
5. Writing on days I have not had decent exercise
6. Writing songs soon after having consumed high-carb, high-fat/sugary foods.
7. On days where circumstances or mood are particularly bad, I often use songwriting to vent it. Doing this repeatedly has caused me to be either reluctant to pick up an guitar, or to feel down on the rare occasions I do use it to write songs.
8. Writing in English
9. Always writing alone.
10. My lyrics continue to have negative, answerless questions.
11. I tend to dress the same way when writing songs every time – Jeans, Sneakers, T-Shirt, etc.
12. Never under the influence of any stimulant during songwriting. (Maybe coffee or tea can help?!)
13. Drawing on past experience rather than visualizing a future.
14. Not rewriting more than once.
15. Not changing the volume of my song at any point.
16. Not meditating on what I want to convey beforehand.

Are any of these issues for you?

What I am noticing is that maybe I am not the only one who gets drawn into a negative funk when writing. It is very well possible that even the greatest of artists have had to dive down into mental mud in order to pull out something that will make them a living.

I subscribe to the view that it doesn’t have to be that way. By looking at the above 16 things, what possible solutions can you come up with in your head to create a different, better songwriting environment for yourself? Comments will help fellow readers and myself.