Guitar in a nature setting

5 Ways to Know It’s Time For a Songwriting Break

Songwriting is supposed to offer you some level of enjoyment and even fun. As we all know, it’s not always like that. Some days you feel the frustration more than you feel the enjoyment. I’m a big fan of breaks. Taking a break has an almost immediate way of reducing frustration and allowing your creative […]

songwriting frustration

Moving Beyond That One Good Song Idea

It’s a common problem for most songwriters at one time or another: you come up with something that’s really catchy, and sounds like the start of a killer song. But then… nothing. You just can’t seem to move beyond that catchy fragment of music. What can you do? On track to make songwriting a full-time […]

Keyboard player - songwriter - chord inversions

Tips for Minimizing the Threat of Writer’s Block

Every songwriter struggles from time to time trying to get a song finished. It’s unavoidable because it’s the nature of the human brain’s ability to be creative. There are days when things flow easily, and other days when it seems all but impossible. Thousands of songwriters are using “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle” […]

Recording Studio - Producer

8 Tips For When All You’ve Got Is One Good Song Idea

How often does this happen to you: You sit down with your guitar, and within moments you’ve got something nice. A great little hook, a riff, or some other kind of musical idea. You play it over and over and it sounds great. And then you draw a blank. And it doesn’t seem to matter […]

Songwriter - Guitarist

On the Theory That Writer’s Block Doesn’t Exist

I recently read an interesting article written by Susan Reynolds, “Five Reasons You’re Experiencing Writer’s Block,” available at the Psychology Today website. In it, Reynolds make the case that writer’s block is a condition that we’ve created for ease of identification, and that it doesn’t actually exist. She starts this way: We’re going to go […]

Songwriter's Block

When Your Creative Process Slams on the Brakes

There’s a analogy for writer’s block that I’ve seen, written by Patrica Huston, MD, in the January 1998 edition of Canadian Family Physician, that succinctly describes what happens when we can’t write anymore: Medical writer and editor Elizabeth Whalen suggests that writer’s block is an example of a “right brain-left brain” conflict. The right, or […]