This post is taken from my developing a songwriting habit mini-course.
In songwriting, mindset plays a critical role in you becoming a better songwriter. We all have that pesky inner critic whispering doubts in our ears as we’re songwriting. Learning when to silence the inner critic and flow with an idea without judgement is an incredibly valuable songwriting discipline to learn.
The Impatient Inner Critic
A couple of years ago I was listening to a podcast by trailer music composer Richard Schreiber. He talked about silencing your impatient inner critic when it comes to writing music. You know, the one that says something is garbage when you’ve only been working on it for 5 minutes.
He talked about having healthy headspaces that separate writing from editing so you stay in a positive and creative state of mind when you’re in writing mode.
Go With The Flow
Writing mode is creative and should flow and be less cerebral. It’s where you’re trying things and being experimental and not overly critical of what you’re doing. You might not love something but you stay positive and keep at it so that you don’t stop and give up prematurely.
Edit mode is where you go back to your writing mode efforts and start to pull ideas together and refine what you’ve written. It is more critical but in an even-handed way.
One gets out of the way of the creating process, the other refines the results of the process.
How Long Is Too Long?
How long should you tinker with an idea in that creative flow? There isn’t a definitive answer of course. Having a set time to work on your songwriting and keeping a recording of the process is a big help. This way you can push to that point and then come back with fresh ears and perspective and be much more even-handed.
The reality is if we give up too soon on an idea we might have missed something special.
This Week:
By now you should be dividing your week up into Monday – Wednesday writing (flow mode) and Thursday and Friday working on existing ideas (edit mode).
Try staying in the free-flow creating process Monday – Wednesday and put off editing the music until Thursday and Friday. Remember, have your phone or other device recording your writing sessions.
In between writing sessions, listen back to the recording and take notes. With fresh ears comes a fresh perspective and what you might have thought was ordinary when in “Flow Mode” is actually something special. Now you have some gold, start to refine that gold in your edit mode sessions
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