Day 3 of Album Writing Month

I'm trying to write one song per day for my February Album Writing Month project. If I can keep up with this, I'll reach the goal of writing 14 songs on 2/14, Valentine's Day, and then I can spend the second half of the month recording quick demos of some of these new songs.

In the past several years, most of my songwriting has been prompted by being struck by inspiration, or has been driven by a fairly specific assignment. It's a little harder to start writing "cold," with nothing to go on. I've turned to my file folder of song ideas collected over the years, and I've also resorted to random brainstorming, just casting about for any idea that catches me. So far I haven't found myself stuck with nothing to write about, but we'll see if the idea stream holds up for 11 more songs.

I encourage songwriters to keep a notebook of song ideas and to start collecting fragments of lyrics and music. Someday your music career might hinge on being able to write a solid album of songs on short notice, and that job will be a lot easier if you've provided yourself some material to start with.

3♠ The lyrics notebook

3♠ Three of Spades in The Rock Songwriter’s Deck: 52 Ways to Write a Song

The Three of Spades doesn't see the need for clever tricks or inspiration games. If it's time to write a song, sit down with your musical instrument, and flip through your lyrics notebook. Find some lyrics that are at least halfway there, then finish the verses, clean up any weak spots, and start composing the music.

Don't have a lyrics notebook? Then the Three of Spades insists that you go out this week, buy a notebook, and start writing lyrics in it!

It's part of the songwriting lifestyle to carry around a notebook and scribble lyrics and ideas in it whenever life inspires you.

To be the perfect picture of a songwriter at work, you have to sit in a coffeeshop or on a bus or train, intently jotting down possible rhymes while the world carries on around you. But it's also fine to sit quietly at home on the occasional evening, dreaming up new lyrics.

Write in pen in a hard-cover book for boldness, or use pencil and a spiral-bound notebook if you want to keep your options open. Or use your iPhone or BlackBerry if you must; it lacks the poetic mystique of pen and paper, but on the positive side, people will assume you're diligently working on stuff for your Very Important Day Job.

If you work in your lyrics notebook even occasionally, you'll end up with ten times more lyrics than you'll ever use, but that's okay. Whenever you're ready to write a song, you won't have to wonder where to start. You'll just whip out your notebook and start flipping through it.