You sit down with your guitar, coffee in hand, ready to write and you find yourself an hour later with two lines you don’t like, a chord progression you’ve played a thousand times before, and a growing urge to go and check your phone.
Believe me, every songwriter knows this feeling. But I’ve found that writer’s block doesn’t always look like a blank page. Sometimes it’s the opposite.
You’ve got a notebook full of titles, a phone full of voice memos, and half a dozen song ideas all competing for attention, and you can’t commit to any of them. Too many options can stop you just as effectively as none at all.
I recently came across a great piece from Amanda Patterson at Writers Write called What Is Writer’s Block? 30 Practical Tips To Beat Writer’s Block. It’s aimed at fiction writers, but almost every tip carries straight over to songwriting with a small tweak.
Here’s my take on it, translated for those of us who write with melody, rhythm and rhyme.
What is songwriter’s block?
Put simply, it’s being unable to start a song or unable to finish one. You feel stuck, and just like quicksand, the harder you push, the more stuck you get.
Novelists and songwriters are fighting the same battle here. We just have a few extra moving parts to deal with, like melody, rhythm, rhyme and the fact that every word has to earn its keep in about three minutes.
The big idea: is it the song or is it you?
The most useful thing in Amanda’s article is a simple split. Sometimes the work is the problem. Sometimes the writer is the problem. The fixes for each are very different, so it pays to work out which one you’re dealing with before you try anything.
Here’s a quick way to check. If you’re keen to write but this particular song won’t budge, the song is probably the problem. If you can’t face picking up the guitar at all, or you keep finding reasons to do something else, it’s more likely you.
Too many ideas can also fall into either camp. If one song has three possible directions and you can’t choose, that’s a song problem. If you’ve got twenty song ideas and can’t bring yourself to start any of them, that’s a you problem. Both get covered below.
When the song is the problem
Change your tool
Amanda suggests handwriting a scene if you normally type. For songwriters, the same idea applies to both lyrics and music. Write your lyrics on paper instead of your laptop. If you always write on guitar, try piano. Try a different tuning or capo position. A new instrument under your hands tends to lead you somewhere your usual habits won’t.
Change the frame
Fiction writers are encouraged to move the setting, shuffle the timeline, switch tense, or tell the story through another character’s eyes. All of these work brilliantly in songs.
Move your song from a city dwelling to a country road and see what images turn up. Switch from past tense to present and notice how much more immediate it feels. Try writing the stuck verse as the bridge, or make your second verse the opening. Or flip the point of view entirely and tell the song from the other person’s side. A breakup song sung by the one who left is a very different song.
This is also a handy fix when a single song has too many possible directions. Instead of agonising over which one is right, give each direction ten minutes as a quick sketch. You’ll usually feel which one has life in it.
Question your narrator
Amanda talks about interviewing your characters. Songs have characters too, even if it’s just the “I” doing the singing. What does that person actually want? What are they afraid of? What would happen if they reacted completely out of character? If your narrator is always the heartbroken one, what if they’re the one who’s relieved?
If you can’t answer these questions, the song might be stuck because you don’t know who’s singing it yet.
Go looking for material
People-watching is one of my favourite tips in the original article. Sit in a café or at a train station and listen to how people talk. Real conversation is full of phrases that make great lyric lines, and they sound natural because they are.
It will also get you out of the house too.
Research helps too. If your song touches on a place, a job or a moment in history, spend twenty minutes reading about it and jot down five details you could use.
Then ask “what if?” What if things got much worse for the person in the song, or much better? Raising the stakes often gives a flat chorus the lift it needs.
Stay in the moment
Find somewhere you won’t be interrupted, pick one image or one moment from the song, and write it slowly, line by line. Don’t worry about rhyme or structure yet. Just get close to the moment and describe what’s there. You can shape it into a verse later.
When you’re the problem
Build a routine
A regular writing time is one of the best defences against block. Amanda recommends working in focused blocks with short breaks in between, something like 50 minutes on and 10 off. Give yourself small rewards for sticking to it. Finished a verse? Go for a walk, grab a good coffee, or listen to an album you love.
Clear the noise
Get the chores out of the way before you sit down, so they’re not nagging at you. Make a list of your usual distractions, whether it’s your phone, emails or suddenly needing to reorganise the pantry. Just knowing your patterns makes them easier to catch.
Set up a space that works for you too. Some writers need silence. Others like a bit of background noise. Work out what suits you and protect it.
Reset your body
Movement helps. So does doing something repetitive with your hands that has nothing to do with writing, like washing the dishes, gardening or walking the dog. These tasks give your mind room to wander, and that’s often when the good lines turn up. A long shower works wonders too, as long as you don’t think about the song while you’re in there.
Change your input
Read a genre you’d never normally pick up. Listen to music you don’t like and try to work out exactly why it rubs you the wrong way. It’s an uncomfortable exercise, but it gets you out of your usual listening habits and can spark ideas you wouldn’t have found otherwise.
Write about being stuck
This is one of my favourites. Write honestly about why you don’t feel like writing. It’s a good way to find out what’s really going on, and every now and then it turns into a lyric. Plenty of great songs have been written about not being able to write a song.
Get help
Co-writing is the songwriter’s secret weapon here. Another person brings fresh ears and a different set of habits, and often breaks a deadlock in minutes. Songwriting groups, workshops and courses do the same job, and they keep you accountable.
My take: when too many ideas become the block
For me, the problem is often not a lack of ideas. It’s having too many and not being able to decide which one to chase. Every idea feels promising, so choosing one feels like giving up on the others. The result is that nothing gets finished.
Here’s what helps me:
- Keep an idea bank. Every title, lyric fragment and voice memo goes into one place. Knowing an idea is safely stored makes it much easier to leave it alone for now.
- Pick one and set a time limit. I choose the idea that grabs me most today, not the “best” one, and give it a fixed session. If it’s still alive at the end, I keep going. If not, it goes back in the bank.
- Finish before you start again. A finished song you’re not in love with teaches you more than five brilliant first verses. Aim for a complete draft first and polish later.
- Remember that parked isn’t dead. Some of my best songs came from ideas that sat untouched for months, sometimes years. Choosing one idea today doesn’t mean losing the others.
Looking ahead, AI tools can help here too, as long as they’re used the right way. I sometimes use them as a sounding board to talk through which of my ideas has the strongest hook, or to throw out a few “what if” angles when I’m stuck.
The key is keeping the writing yours. Use them to get moving, not to do the work for you but please bear in mind, this is a personal opinion and what helps me. How you do things will be adaptable for you.
The last word
Remember, at the end of the day, every songwriter gets stuck and that’s ok. Sometimes it’s the song and sometimes it’s you, and sometimes it’s simply having too many good options on the table.
The fix is to try a few of these ideas until one works, then keep writing regularly. The more often you write, the less power the block has over you.
If you’d like the full list of 30 tips, head over to Amanda Patterson’s original article at Writers Write. It’s well worth the read.
Now, what gets you unstuck?
