I’ve been on this kick lately about what it means to “be” something. It usually doesn’t take much. If you are a painter, you must paint. If you are a limousine driver, you must drive limousines. If you are a plumber, you must plumb.
I fashion myself as a songwriter. There is only one real requirement to being a songwriter, you must write songs. There’s no way around it. You can’t be a songwriter without writing songs. It is a beautifully simple concept.
One major problem that I often struggle with is that instead of writing songs, I’m just thinking about writing songs. And thinking about writing songs is not writing. It’s only thinking about doing something that you’re not doing. All the thinking is a fancy way to procrastinate from applying ass to chair and actually doing the work.
A couple weeks ago I started Songwriting Club with a few of my songwriting buddies. It’s a songwriting accountability club. Each day you must spend at least twenty minutes writing songs. Thinking about writing doesn’t count, you must write. If you don’t write that day, there are consequences in they way of having to treat the rest of the group to a pizza party.
Here are the official rules of Songwriting Club:
- You must spend twenty minutes (minimum) working on songwriting. After each session, you send a photo of what you did that day to the rest of the group. Failure to do so results in you treating the rest of the group to a pizza party. This is known as the the “Pizza Party Penalty” (PPP).
- A “day” in this case means before you go to bed that day. And not when the day might otherwise be technically over according to the clock.
- You can spend more than twenty minutes if you like. It’s entirety up to you. No pressure.
- You can take days off, as many as you want, at any time. But you must give the group 24 hours notice. None of this “I don’t feel like writing today so I’m gonna take they day off” nonsense.
- You can take the day off if you’re ill or you have to deal with some kind of emergency. No pizza party penalty for this.
- You can spend your songwriting session in any way that you like, as long as it constitutes as “working on songwriting”
- The quality doesn’t matter. Doesn’t have to be good, just has to get done.
- No critiquing allowed. Keep your stupid opinions to yourself. This is not the time for feedback.
- Positive vibes of encouragement are welcome. Stuff like “Way to go” or “Nice job” or “keep it up” are perfectly acceptable
- You can’t invite new members to the group without first consulting the existing members.
Songwriting Club has been a massive success. It’s amazing how much I can do once I put my mind to it. I’ve already written five new songs and have gotten solid starts on a few others.
The daily accountability forces me to do the work. What’s most surprising is that it doesn’t feel like a grind at all. It’s enjoyable and I look forward to it. Each song writing session flies by. It doesn’t feel like work. Amazing how quickly twenty minutes can go by. I often will keep going well after the timer goes off.
The cat loves to help me write!
I like to write in the mornings after I eat breakfast. For the rest of the day, I can feel my mind working in the background on a rhyme or a turn of phrase that had me stumped. I’ll be doing something mundane like washing dishes and suddenly my brain will somehow organically figure out the perfect words for the third verse. It’s an incredible form of magic.
Pictured above is a blackout poem I made that came out of a Songwriting Club session.
It was a simple job
But now, most of us
seemingly have albums
that never get finished