Writer’s block; what a songwriter hopes to never endeavor but always meets with every once in a while. Writer’s block is one of the most frustrating moments that a songwriter can encounter with; wanting to write so badly, but not being able to. It reminds me of being exhausted but not being able to fall asleep; both frustrating and painful. Although events like these feel as though they are never ending, there is always a moment that breaks the block and allows you to continue moving forward. How are you supposed to move on yourself? What can you do to personally defeat writer’s block yourself? Don’t worry, songwriters, I understand it seems impossible, it seemed impossible to me, too. But before you doubt me any further, here are five ways to defeat writer’s block.
Task number one: Don’t think. Yea, I understand that it is much easier said than done, but all you have to do is take a load off. Calm your mind from the thoughts of “this isn’t good” and “this is a dumb idea”. No idea is dumb! Every idea has potential to be something great. Allow your thoughts to flow and don’t let anything hold you back from continuing to invent and create. You’ve clearly done this before, you’re just stuck in this moment of writer’s block. Don’t let it get you down, continue to move forward.
Tast number two: Think on your feet. Get out of your bed and get out of your head! Go for a walk, grab a piece of paper and allow everything in your head to evolve outwards. You can’t think of anything you don’t yet know, everything you know is in your head. Make observations about the world around you and allow that to create an entirely different view of everything in your head. The ideas in your mind are always going to be the same; jump out of your mind and get it on paper. By putting your ideas on paper, your able to externalize your ideas and instead of visualize them, they are there for your eyes to see. It is amazing to see your ideas on paper because you evolve new ideas from seeing what is on your paper. This method helps you to keep that initial idea and continue to create new ones and evolve from your original idea. You can put your thought process on paper and have every idea down and move very quickly instead of sitting and thinking about one consistent idea.
Task number three: Steal from other music. Wait, before you bail out on me, listen in on this one for a second. Listen to some of your favorite artists and find what you love about their music. Take their meaning or feeling you recieve from that song and write about it. Take chords from a song and take the strumming from another song. Don’t worry about being “original”, no song is “original”; most songs have evolved from other songs, so you can do the same thing! One of my teachers in the STAC Program at my highschool created this writing strategy: listen to a brand new song you’ve never heard before and try to write down the lyrics as you listen to it once. You’d be surprised how different your mind hears the words in the song rather than what is actually being said. By doing this, you create lyrics that are beyond your minds creation and you create something that was based off of something else unintentionally. Your ears may have heard a beautiful lyric that was never actually there. Now you’ve gotten something to work off of. It seems strange to want to create music by listening to other music, but you find what you love in other artists and you create your own specific style from that.
Task number four: Do something else! I know when you’re trying to beat writer’s block, all you want to do is sit in your room and try to punch out some lyrics, but don’t! Instead, go do another one of your favorite hobbies; dance around your room, watch a movie, write about your day in a journal, or talk to a friend. After doing that, see how you feel. Write it down. Even just simply writing how you feel in a specific moment or time is a special feeling that you can’t artificially create. The more genuine your words, the better. Even if you can’t write a song at that moment, you can go back and look at that specific moment and feel what you felt. This has always helped me write about one specific thing over a long period of time. Simply going back and reading something you’ve written some time ago is like looking into the past. This is an incredible experience and has a strange play on time. Not only is this experience beautiful, it helps your songwriting gears turn.
Last but not least, task number five: Don’t force anything. You’re in writer’s block and nothing is working for you? That’s okay! Don’t stress about it, eventually things will fall back into place. Don’t try to create something when you’re not feeling it. You can’t force art when it doesn’t want to be created. This doesn’t mean give up completely, it simply means take a break. Remove yourself from the activity and reset. Once you reset, you’ll feel a whole lot better, sometimes even better enough to go right back to writing! You’ll eventually be able to write again, so don’t force it too much and take your time. You’re brilliant and you can do this, I know you can because you’ve done this before and you’re strong enough to overcome anything. Simply apply all of the strategies that you can and move on from there. Moments like this help you grow and make you stronger as a songwriter. Think of it as a beautiful thing, you can only move on from here, it is simply which path you choose to take, and each path is a lovely path full of new experiences, achievements, and outcomes. Now go ahead and be the best songwriter you can be, because you can be and you are! Just remember: sometimes it takes a fall to stand up tall.