What is a Creative Habit?
Ten ideas for songwriters to try to prepare for writing
There are three things here all going on at the same time:
Songwriting
Creativity, and
Habits (something we often do)
There are a number of great websites about this, but few put them all together. A songwriter’s creative habit is something that many songwriters do as a matter of course. For me, each morning I wake up is best to do this, and others do it later in the day. Whatever time or approach, there are all creative habits to prepare for writing songs.
I still love the work by Twyla Tharp’s “The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life”. It’s been around for over 15 years in my life, but it’s still an important work that changed my approach to creativity and writing songs. But, as I started on my own creative journey, I picked up a few different alternatives that I found really helpful to try. Here are a few of them.
Ten ideas for songwriters to try
1. Object writing — This was the first time I did any kind of creative habit after reading Pat Pattison’s book, Writing Better Lyrics. The idea, basically, is to pick an arbitrary object — a real object — and then describe it with as much sensory detail as possible. This is set out in Chapter 1 of his book, and Pat’s methodology is awesome. I’d totally recommend it.
2. Destination writing — This is an incredibly helpful application of Pat’s methodology I found in Andrea Stolpe’s excellent book Popular Lyric Writing — 10 Steps to Effective Storytelling. Andrea is also another teacher of songwriting and talks about this in detail in Chapter 2 of her book. In short, it’s sense-bound free writing focusing on a place, a person, or a time instead of an object. Similarly, you need to write describing everything related to the senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, sound, and movement.
3. Morning pages — This was something I found in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way Workbook, which I found incredibly helpful. It was a time when I had just quit my corporate job but still felt too left-brained and not right-brained enough. Well, that book introduced me to a new way of looking at creativity, and morning pages are right at the heart of her work. Brilliant stuff.
4. Journaling — This is something most of my co-writers do, and all of these habits can also be included. I use journaling to write about what’s been going on in my life, how I feel about it, and what I’m going to try to achieve in the day ahead. And sometimes include my creative to-do list. It’s a good way to get the day kick-started. It’s also a great way to put on paper what you feel about things going on in life, especially bad moments but also good moments as well. DayOne is a great app to do this on any Mac platform. And it’s secure. Very secure.
5. Freewriting — That is one of my favorite creative exercises because, well, there really are NO RULES except for one: to write more than 500 words or write for 15 minutes. I’d say that out of the 20 years I’ve been songwriting, 70% of my creative habit time has been spent on freewriting. I love the freedom of free writing. It’s the best way to exercise your writing muscle — just like you might do at a gym — especially if you combine some of these other methodologies. Squibler.io is a nice place to have fun. Obviously, if a cool idea for a song lyric or title arises, I capture these every time. They are gold.
6. Blogging — I love blogging. While I don’t use it as often as I used to, writing for an audience is a great habit to be in. Knowing that someone was likely to be looking at my blog (even if only one person was out there) is a great way to capture shareable ideas whenever they arrive. I find I write better for a blog than when free writing. Capturing blog ideas is very similar to capturing new song ideas.
7. Freeplaying — This is my musical own musical habit and is the equivalent of freewriting. When I started really enjoying my time freewriting, I realized I was missing the opportunity to exercise my musical muscles. So I started a similar thing — just jumping on the piano each day for 15 minutes and playing anything. Often a great musical idea will just pop out. And, of course, I capture everything that’s worth keeping.
8. Practicing — It may sound more like work but spending some time on your chosen instrument:
It makes you a better musician
It takes you to different places from a songwriting perspective, and
It opens up a new set of skills that you might actually use during writing, recording a work tape, or even demoing.
9. Pivoting — Part of being a songwriter is using experience in song lyrics but writing them in several different ways:
Taking specifics into general ideas
Painting emotions into the music
Turning personal into universal ideas
This is what song maps are all about, set out in my book, Song Mapping. This is a way of pivoting ideas in different ways - simply writing the story of the ideas being written in whichever Song Map you wish to use. And it’s fun as a creative habit, just to see where it goes.
10. The Bible — What better place to start when writing songs? I love this because there are so many creative aspects that come together – honesty, history, poetry, and truth all at the same time. I love the idea of Psalming that my friend, Krissy Nordhoff, introduced me to in her lovely book ‘Writing Worship: How to craft heartfelt songs for the church’. It’s also golden stuff.
Questions
Here are a few questions:
What is your own favorite creative habit?
Have you tried any of the above techniques?
Are there any other creative ideas that you’ve found? Let me know!
Hope this helps!
Simon