Revision is one of the most respected parts of songwriting. We’re told to rewrite, refine, and polish. To cut the weak lines, strengthen the chorus, and keep working until the song “gets there.” All of that advice is sound. Revision…
Most songwriting advice focuses on technique. Chord choices. Rhyme schemes. Song structures. Productivity hacks. All useful, all necessary, and all slightly incomplete. Because long before a song takes shape on a page or in a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), something…
One of the quiet traps songwriters fall into is thinking about the audience too early in the songwriting process. These questions feel responsible, even professional. But when asked too soon, they can quietly derail a song before it has a…
There’s a line from American writer Dave Eggers that keeps circling back in my mind: “What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand.” It’s one of those…
You know, there’s a particular weight that unfinished songs carry. Not the kind that sits loudly on your desk, but the quiet kind. The song you keep meaning to start. The lyric you circled weeks ago. The melody that showed…
Songwriting doesn’t begin when you pick up a guitar, sit at a piano, or open a DAW. It begins much earlier than that. It begins in how you move through the world, how you notice things, and how you respond…
Songwriters and authors don’t often get mentioned in the same breath, but they wrestle with remarkably similar problems. Yet there’s one area where authors often have a quieter advantage: they tend to think long-term by default. Songwriters, on the other…