5 ways to combat songwriter's block

Back in 2012, I wrote a post that got a lot of hits on 5 ways to combat writer's block. It had 5 simple pieces of advice that worked well for my dissertation and blog writing, but not so much for my songwriting. Unfortunately, ever since starting dissertation work, I've had a horrible case of writer's block when it comes to writing songs. I thought I was "unblocked" once I graduated, because I started having all kinds of song ideas, but these were limited to musical ideas. It was like writing a dissertation took all the lyrics out of me. This made songwriting quite difficult, because in the past, lyrics and music have always gone hand-in-hand for me. I couldn't make the musical ideas "stick" without lyrics, and I had a hard time writing lyrics without the metric guidelines of a melody. In the last few months I've had a little more success writing songs -- including lyrics -- once again, so I thought I'd share 5 ways that have helped me to combat writer's block for song lyrics:

1. Pay attention to the poetry in everyday language.

Usually all it takes to send me into a lyric-writing session is a really great turn of phrase or concept -- but these don't have to come from my own brain. Inspiration can come through sermons, lectures, TV, literature (one of my favorites), a conversation, or pretty much anywhere else language is spoken. All that is needed is to pay attention to the beauty in these everyday places.

2. Read for fun. 

I don't think it's an accident that my writing began to perk up when I started to read for fun again. Even if the inspiration is not directly tied to any of those books, beautiful and unique language has a way of slowly seeping in and becoming part of your way of thinking.

3. Try on a different perspective

I've found that I can lessen writer's block if I stop worrying about representing my own experience and instead put myself in someone else's shoes to write from their perspective. It's hard to write a sad love song when you're happily married, so I've found "trying on" other perspectives helpful for expanding my range of subject matter. (Reading good literature helps with this, too, by the way.)

This point is really important for songwriters, because sometimes we buy into the myth that songwriters should always be writing "authentically from the soul" or something like that. Adele's albums are both supposedly autobiographical about particular years of her life, Taylor Swift immortalizes a different boyfriend in every song, and we all love a good "behind-the-song" true story. But here's the thing: no piece of art emerges purely from the artist's experience. Facts get changed when they are turned to poetry and meanings get changed upon reception. Bob Dylan, lauded by the "authentic" sixties folk community, was a notorious self-mythologizer, telling people he had traveled from the South up to New York by train, joining the circus along the way -- oh, and that his name was Bob Dylan. The truth was that Robert Zimmerman was just an ordinary middle class kid from Minnesota who dropped out of college to pursue music in New York. But Dylan wore that hard-times-Okie persona until it wore out, penning several classic folk tunes along the way. "Blowin' in the Wind" isn't the product of Dylan being "himself" but of Dylan trying on the perspective of Woody Guthrie -- and there's nothing wrong with that.

4. Be specific

This one's tough for me. I want to write about ALL THE THINGS, especially the "big" "important" ones. But the great paradox of art is that the particular has the uncanny ability to become the most universal. So go ahead and write about those peculiar elements of life that give a story that "real" feel. Somehow, details about cats and coffee and specific Led Zeppelin songs in my lyrics are a lot more effective at conveying ineffable emotions than big, abstract words would be. I'm working on it. Again, it helps when I'm inspired by literature or the Bible or something so that I can pick out specific details from those stories to write about.

5. Practice writing lyrics to a set meter or writing filler lyrics for that melody you don't want to lose.

Okay, so I haven't actually tried either of these, but much greater writers than I am have. Paul McCartney famously sang the lines "scrambled eggs, oh my baby how I love your legs" to the tune for "Yesterday" before filling in the real lyrics later. (Here he is, singing that version--altered and expanded of course--with Jimmy Fallon -- it's awesome!) Leonard Cohen has filled entire notebooks with variations on his songs, and while he admits that words and music are mutually instructive to one another in the writing process, he also says in this interview that at a particular point in his writing he "was only writing Spenserian stanzas to be set to music." Starting with a set poetic form can provide the metric restraints necessary to prod your lyric writing without imposing a particular melody on top of it. And classic forms are easily adaptable to many melodies.

Fellow songwriters, what are your tips for combating writer's block?