How To Break Out Of Your Songwriting Rut And Feel Inspired Again

Do you feel like your melodies are dated? Are you in a creative rut?

It happens to us all. We start rolling and write a bunch of songs we really love, and then one day we wake up and everything starts sounding the same. Every new idea we create seems familiar. And worse, those ideas may sound like melodies we heard years before! So, how do we get our “freshness” back and stop banging our head against the wall? Let‰’s think about when we first started listening to music. We couldn’t get enough. We bought the latest records and wore them out listening over and over to our favorite songs. We identified with the words and the sounds. We became those songs. And when we started writing our own songs, we drew from a deep well. The words and music we absorbed during all of those listening hours were filtered through us and came out of our guitar and pen in a new way.

If you want to get back to this inspired fresh writing, it’s really very simple. You must be inspired again!

As famed author Stephen King says in his book On Writing, ‰If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.‰ It’s actually impossible to be good at writing for very long if you are not constantly listening to new music and being inspired. So, if you are feeling like you are in a rut with your creativity, I challenge you to find a new record that inspires you. Sing along to it. Strum the chords on your guitar. Let it soak into every cell of your body and remember why you love music so much. Your writing will thank you.

Write On!  ~Clay