4 Ways Pro Songwriters Outwrite You Every Time

Clay Mills and Marty Dodson break down four habits that separate pro songwriters from everybody else — starting with the big one: pros don’t wait on inspiration. Along the way they get into Jack Tempchin and Glenn Frey lighting a candle to “invite the muse,” Chris Wallin on replacing an incredible line wit4 Ways Pro Songwriters Outwrite You Every Time

Marty and I were talking the other day about what actually separates the writers who make a living at this from the writers who don’t. Not talent. Not luck. Not who they know.

Habits.

We came up with four, and I’ll be honest — when Marty said pros do this “every time,” I laughed at him a little. But the more we got into it, the more I think he’s right. These four things show up in every legendary writer I’ve ever been in a room with. Every single one.

Here they are.

1. Pros don’t wait for inspiration

Jack Tempchin wrote “Peaceful Easy Feeling” for the Eagles, along with a pile of other songs you know by heart. I asked him once whether he and Glenn Frey would show up to a write with ideas already in hand — titles, concepts, something to build on.

He said no. He said they’d show up in the evening, light a candle, Glenn would open a bottle of wine, and they’d invite the muse to join them.

I love that. Not “we waited around until we felt something.” They made an appointment with inspiration and then kept it. And Jack said that almost every time they did it, they walked out with a really good song.

Marty’s first publisher told him something less poetic but just as true. He said, “Son, you’ve got to come in here and write every chance you get. You can’t wait on whether you’re feeling it or not.” His line was that the people who win are the ones with their butts in the chair most often.

Here’s my confession. When I got my first publishing deal, I started showing up every day like I was supposed to — and I wrote 25 songs that first year. Twenty-five. Meanwhile the writers around me were turning in a couple hundred. I couldn’t do it. I hadn’t learned the skill of sitting down and pulling something out of thin air. That’s what it is, by the way — a skill, not a mood.

Now, every time we say this on the channel, somebody in the comments says, “Well, that’s how crappy songs get written.”

Sure. Sometimes. I’ve written a lot of crappy songs, and I’d do it again. But here’s the thing that comment misses: every great writer I’ve known wrote on a schedule. Showing up doesn’t guarantee you a great song that day. It guarantees you’re using the muscle. And a day where the song didn’t turn out isn’t a wasted day — it’s a day you learned something you’ll use in six months without even noticing.

2. Pros write often enough to stay sharp

This one’s Marty’s, and it’s the natural follow-up.

We’re not saying everybody has to write every day. Most of you have jobs and kids and a life, and we know that. What we’re saying is: write as often as you can. Work it in around everything else. Don’t let songwriting be the thing you get around to every now and then when the mood strikes.

And it’s not about competing with anybody. Forget competing. Here’s the real reason.

Imagine something big happens in your life. Something that cracks you open. And you sit down to write about it, because you have to.

If you’ve spent the last two years messing with a hundred different chord progressions, playing with rhyme schemes, trying structures that scared you a little — then when that moment comes, you’ve got tools. A whole workbench of them. That song gets to be as good as the feeling that started it.

But if you’ve been sitting around for six months waiting on inspiration to show up? That’s like getting told to run around the block after three years on the couch. You can do it. It’s just going to be ugly, and it’s going to fall well short of what you’re actually capable of.

Writing is a muscle. Muscles that don’t get used don’t get stronger.

3. Pros are not precious with their writing

Chris Wallin — great writer, great friend, and a guy who is definitively not precious — told me once that the hardest thing for a new writer to learn is this:

Replacing an incredible line in your song with the right line for your song.

Read that again, because it’s sneaky. He’s not talking about cutting a bad line. Anybody can cut a bad line. He’s talking about a line that’s genuinely great, a line you’re proud of, a line you’d put on a T-shirt — that just isn’t serving this song. Letting go of that is the hard part.

Jason Duke, who does mentoring over in SongTown, calls it writing with Velcro lines. Nothing’s nailed down. At any point you can rip a line off and stick something better in its place. I think that’s exactly the right posture to write from.

Marty used to write with Amy Mayo, and she had a trick for the emotional side of this. She kept a notebook, and any time a great line got cut from a song, she wrote it down in there. It let her release it. The line wasn’t dying — it was going into the vault for later. That small act took all the anxiety out of cutting it.

Because at the end of the day, a song isn’t a highlight reel of how clever you are. There’s a bigger picture you’re serving. And sometimes the honest, plain, perfect-for-this-song line beats the brilliant one. Every time.

4. Pros don’t settle until it’s right

Marty had an artist come in one time and play him something. The guy said, “Man, we wrote this in 15 minutes on the bus with my band, check it out.”

Marty listened and had no idea what the song was about. So when the guy asked what he thought, Marty said, “Well… it sounds like a song you wrote in 15 minutes on the bus with your band.”

Harsh? Maybe. True? Absolutely. And to the artist’s credit, he agreed it probably needed more work.

There’s a real temptation to think I wrote it, therefore it’s good. We’ve even heard the version around SongTown that goes, “God gave me this song, so it’s perfect.” Our response to that is: maybe don’t give God credit for that one. He wants you to work. He wants you to be a good shepherd of the talent.

Good songs are written. Great songs are rewritten.

And here’s where this is getting harder in 2026. I was in a write recently and before everybody had even packed up their gear, one of the writers had run a quick AI demo. It came back sounding great. Full production. And your brain goes, “Well, we’re done here.”

We weren’t done. We should have come back with fresh ears and looked at that song again, and it would have been better.

Jason Duke said something interesting about this in a SongTown video — when a co-writer fires off an instant AI demo, the songs somehow stop mattering as much to him. He hasn’t gone back through the process of making sure every line is right, of demoing it and living with it. If it’s that easy, the song doesn’t seem to carry any weight.

So my encouragement: don’t rush to demo anything — AI, full band, doesn’t matter — until you’re sure the song is right. If you think you’ve got something great, that’s exactly the song that deserves more time, not less.

Marty’s first publisher used to say, “It’s not final till it’s final.” Meaning until it’s on the radio, on the record, in the store — it’s not done.

Honestly? I go further than that. I’ve got songs that have been on the radio for years, and I’ll hear one come on and start rewriting a line in my head. What was I thinking rhyming that with that?

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Four habits. None of them require talent you don’t already have. They just require showing up, staying sharp, holding your lines loosely, and refusing to quit on a song before it’s actually finished.

Bless you guys for writing songs. We’ll see you around town.

— Clayh the right line, Jason Duke’s “Velcro lines,” and why a quick AI demo can trick you into thinking a song is finished when it isn’t.

Clay & Marty’s 10-day video series:

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SongTown Press Books:

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Song Building: Mastering Lyric Writing : Check It Out

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