In songwriting, or any creative pursuit, a lot of people like to talk about “the muse” and whether she might appear to fuel your work. It’s important to be “ready” for her arrival otherwise you might miss your opportunity to receive your million-dollar idea or your hit song. And it’s fun to be visited by the muse too, that magical moment when you can’t fully explain how something materialized.
But in my experience, the muse never comes randomly.
My experience is that she is summoned through intentional exploration. And creative work is born from everyday curiosity.
Most of my songs didn’t just come out of thin air; they were crafted from specific actions I took, noticing and building from an initial “spark”–a word, a riff, a journal entry–and giving it a chance to fire up and develop into something bigger. I’d love to share some of the ways I’ve done this, time and time again.
To embrace this idea, you will have to be willing to strike the match yourself to start a song. But don’t worry–you don’t have to have it all figured out before you even begin. Rather than putting so much pressure on yourself to catch great ideas from “the muse,” it’s better to develop methods that result in a flow of inspiration so that you can consistently generate ideas and then cherry-pick your best ones.
This process is about making inspiration more readily available by developing habits that jumpstart your creativity. When you learn to nurture your creative space and enable a stream of varied inspiration, you will have a kindling fire of ideas to pull from.
An initial spark doesn’t need to be a fully fleshed out song, melody, lyric, or demo track. You just need something small enough that it doesn’t take a lot of work to create, but distinct enough that it feels unique and you can build upon it more. Below are some example tactics that can result in starting points for your song:
Music
- A recorded riff that you played or that someone sent you
- A karaoke instrumental to another song
- A chord progression (even 1 or 2 chords can be enough)
- A song or playlist of songs from an artist you like, ones that truly inspire you
- A sample from Splice, your DAW, or an instrumental that isn’t too busy
Words
- A phrase or word you find interesting
- A writing prompt
- A sync brief
Life Experiences
- A journal entry
- A text thread with a friend or family member
- Something you heard someone say in conversation
These are just a few potential ideas, but this list could go on forever. I actually encourage you to take note of your own list, and then continue to add more tactics as you discover them. It may also be helpful to reflect on songs you’ve already written to dissect what tactics were used on them, but it’s also important to try adding new ones to your toolkit. It might feel weird to think about writing in a new way–a lot of people have a default, comfortable way they start songs–but I challenge you to try another tactic because you might be pleasantly surprised at how your writing changes when you change the starting point.
For example, I used to always start with lyrics and make up the melody against the natural cadence of the words…but over time I started writing more to tracks or instrumentals that other producer-writers sent me. I’ve found I really enjoy that starting point now because it takes me out of my head and I can write more with melodic instincts. The more potential ways you have to begin, the less you’ll depend on waiting for inspiration to strike.
Once you settle on some tactics to work with I recommend that you set aside some time to strike your match and workshop them. Time spent can be a short window as the goal is not to then write your whole song yet, it’s to create the spark. I’ll give you an example of how this can go:
Let’s say you found a word or phrase you find interesting. That in itself might be enough of a spark, but if not you can push on it:
- You can spend 10 minutes free-writing against that word or phrase; maybe you’ll start to collect words or phrases that mean the same thing, ones that mean the opposite thing, or ones that you organically think of. Then perhaps you try looking up some idiomatic phrases that are similar ideas to what you’re brainstorming. Let your imagination run wild.
- After the time is up, you can take another 5 minutes to take some inventory on what you wrote down: this is when you start to surface the most interesting bits of your free-write. Again, you may need some more work-shopping, or you might already have a distinct spark that excites you at this point.
- A session like this might only be 20-30 minutes total, and by the end of it you’d want to highlight your best work for review later (write it down on a google doc or record it if there is a melody idea).
This exact process has resulted in some of my favorite songs. For example, my song Comfortable started from a word and accompanying idea – the idea of a girlfriend wearing her boyfriend’s “knee long socks” that she’s adopted as her own; I liked the intimate idea of sharing clothes when you’re comfortable enough in a relationship. I didn’t write this song overnight, but I loved the notion of couples sharing clothes and the sock idea was a spark that was interesting enough to develop into a free-write that eventually became the song lyrics.
While I’m happy to share this anecdote, it’s important to note that your spark ideation exercises should be viewed as exercises with no expectations. And luckily if you’ve only taken 20-30 minutes to ideate you haven’t invested too much time into that developing spark yet, so you likely won’t have any strings attached to the idea–you can easily do another exercise tomorrow and come up with a new spark. By making a habit of quick ideation, the ideas you come up with won’t feel too precious, and that’s a good thing.
Imagine, if you created a spark every day, or even a few times a week. Once you have a handful of sparks to work with, you can really see which ones are more worthwhile and interesting, and make a more informed decision to develop those ones more. Once you have a truly good idea, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to get to a verse / chorus.
At some point you may feel like you want to log/develop every spark you come up with. Don’t do this. Remind yourself – When photographers do a photo-shoot do they forcibly publish every photo they took? No. A majority are warm up/test photos and most of them are trash. When you see a beautiful gallery of 35 photos, it’s guaranteed that the original lot taken was significantly larger. This is because photographers go for volume and let the good stuff rise to the top through good taste, discernment, and savvy editing.
As long as you commit to having some regular writing/creative time in your weekly schedule and set part of that time to review ideas, you’ll be well on your way. I like to look back at previous sparks a few times a month. I find it more helpful to have some distance between me and an idea before committing to it because I know if it’s truly good I’ll be excited about it later too.
And what a good feeling it is–knowing you can strike your own match and not have to wait for the muse–instead of hoping for inspiration you can cultivate ideas from everyday curiosity and give them space to ignite. Happy writing!