Writer's Block Is a Myth

“Yes, I have experienced it”.

“So why are you saying it's a myth?”

“Because I don’t think it’s a thing. By acknowledging it we make it official and give it more power than it has. It’s not an illness we catch and have to live with.

However, it’s a place we put ourselves in. And ultimately, we don’t have to end up there. Ever.

When writing songs, let’s consider 3 elements :

1- Inspiration sources. What are we feeding ourselves with to get inspired? Do we read books and newspapers? Do we watch movies or the news? Do we draw from last experiences and other people's stories? A walk in nature? Another song?

2- Our openness to receiving and using the information to build our own stories, pick a title out of a paragraph, and so on is connected to the sources. So, we need to be on the lookout, consciously at first and then unconsciously by creating that habit. It’s a sort of manifestation if you will.

We create space to let ideas flow in and out.

And we should always be ready to capture the idea. Voice memo, notepad, notebook, a napkin, whatever works!

I have let many ideas flow by…too many. It’s now rare for me to walk around without a way to make notes.

3- Writing is like working out. Exercise the muscle! If we wait in front of an empty page for a song to drop, we could be there for a while claiming having caught a bad case of writer’s block.

Let’s write consistently, daily if possible, without trying to finish a song. Free writing. Like journaling.

Pick one concept, one word out of the “inspiration sources” and set your mind free to come up with everything about it, without judgment. Is it good or bad? We don’t care.

Out of that, I guarantee, we will have plenty of great content to play with and build parts of a song and sometimes a full song. And once in a while a great song.

The pressure to finish every song creates a mental block because we are trying too hard. We narrow it down too much, too soon, and end up stuck with nowhere to go. And that’s frustrating.

Let’s give ourselves a break here, not every song needs to be finished, and not every song has to be good.

But with time, we’ll realize there is always something to write about. There is always at least one concept or idea that can be developed into a song from the paragraph we write.

Let’s open up and allow the flood of ideas to be expressed and tried.

In the process, there’s no room for a so-called writer’s block.