Writers Block – Just Write Crap

Writers block provides you song writing help in your songwriting development. Here's how to make songwriting flow. It’s a songwriting 101, write anything, write crap, but just write.

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At first this might seem silly but it’s not. Writing crap is something all songwriters do. It’s part of the process of developing your skills. I’ve heard it said that writing 90 - 95% crap is fairly normal for most pro writers.

If it’s good enough for them there must be something to it. The secret is this. You have to write, write and write to consistently produce good songs. Even then great writers come up with songs that end up in the crap pile.

I've heard it said that Leonard Cohan tries to write one line of a song a day. It might take him 4-6 hours to find that perfect line. There are about 28 lines in a song. That’s one song a month. Think about how many lines were pure crap and how many weren’t quite good enough.

What happens if you take a month at a line a day and end up with 28 perfect lines in your song? Maybe it’s a perfect song. Many pro writers don’t write a hit song a year and some of them are writing 50 – 100 songs a year. Sometimes to get to a great song you have to write through a lot of crap.

Maybe you won’t end up at the perfect piece to your song unless you work through the crap. Songwriting is a process. One idea leads to and builds on another. You don’t get to the end of a road without kicking a few stones and creating a little dust.

Writers block can happen because writers stop writing. Don’t worry about writing crap. Just write anything if you’re blocked. Do object writing, write a letter, just write, write and write.

Then go and look for that one good idea in what you’ve written and try writing about it. Sort through the crap for gems.