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Recently I wrote a blog post about organizing your songwriting sessions. In this article, I want to give you some suggestions for speeding up how long it takes you to write a song.
In most of the creative arts, speed-writing is praised as a good way to tap into your imagination and strengthen your technique. If for no other reason, speed-writing can give you the confidence and belief that it is possible to write something of fairly high quality when you write very quickly.
The other day I came across an article that was meant for writers of words, but I think the ideas the author Henri Junttila describes pertain every bit as much to writers of music, including the value of speed-writing.
It’s hard to know if the advice one finds in some random article can actually be helpful. But in this case, “Double Your Writing Speed: 10 Top Tips” offers suggestions that I’ve been mentioning on my blog for years now, including:
- sketching out an outline as a way of keeping a song organized;
- silencing your inner critic;
- speed-writing;
- setting a deadline for songs to be completed.
I’d recommend you give that article a read, and think “songwriting” every time you see the word “writing.”
Speed-writing is not exactly the same thing as speeding up how long it takes to complete a song. But one usually leads to the other. Speed-writing (what Junttila calls a “brain dump”) gives you the confidence that you can be imaginative in very quick bursts of writing.
You can take issue with some of the ideas in that article, of course. We’re all individuals, so some concepts will work for some and not for others. But if you’re looking for a way to make more efficient use of your songwriting sessions, I suggest giving some of the ideas a try.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.
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