Cure Songwriter’s Block and Get Inspired

Got songwriter’s block? The internet may be the cause of a lot of distraction, but it can also offer a cure for a lot of things…including curing the inability to break through a rut.

Here’s a list of all kinds of sites that have inspired me in various ways and helped start or restart the flowing of the creative juices, especially concerning lyric and thematic writing:

• Arjun Basu’s Twitter feed: the man is a genius at succinctly fitting a short story into 140 characters or less.
• LyriCloud: creates a “cloud” of semantically-correlated words which you can explore to spark creativity
• OneWord: a lyric brainstorming tool
• Plot Spline: a framing device for helping you devise plot and setting constraints for lyric writing
• RhymeZone: an online rhyming dictionary (I often keep this open in a window while writing). Alternate rhyming dictionary: WriteExpress
• Titular: a tool that generates several (potentially awkward) song titles for you to interpret and write about
• If you have a guitar at hand (regardless of whether you’re a guitarist or not), look up a guitar chord finder (like this one) and learn a new chord and incorporate it into a new song idea.
• Here’s 10 Creative Rules of Thumb — thanks to Bobby Owsinski at Music 3.0.
  1. The best way to get great ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.
  2. Create ideas that are 15 minutes ahead of their time…not light years ahead.
  3. Always look for a second right answer.
  4. If at first you don’t succeed, take a break.
  5. Write down your ideas before you forget them.
  6. If everyone says you are wrong, you’re one step ahead. If everyone laughs at you, you’re two steps ahead.
  7. The answer to your problem “pre-exists.” You need to ask the right question to reveal the answer.
  8. When you ask a dumb question, you get a smart answer.
  9. Never solve a problem from its original perspective.
  10. Visualize your problem as solved before solving it.
• Master the Art of Momentum, and discipline yourself to build it.
• More reasons to co-write, thanks to Songtrust.
• Google and search YouTube for interviews with artists and songwriters you like. Hearing insights into the way they work and put their music together can be a gold mine of kickstarting help. Songwriters on Process is a great site for that.
• Here’s Songtrust’s article on How To Write Better Lyrics. It has some more creative suggestions.
• Though written from a literary perspective, Aliventure’s Seven Habits of Serious Writers contains a lot of useful common-sense tips. In the same vein, here’s Seven Ways to Build Up Your Writing Confidence.
• Here’s MusicThinkTank’s Top Ten Rules for Better Songwriting.
• Here’s MusicMarketing.com’s 10 Tips to Conquer Writer’s Block.
• CDBaby’s Songwriting Tips from the Hitmakers, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
• Discmaker’s 11 Tips to Help the Songwriter Get Unstuck.
• Bryan White’s 20 Songwriter Tips.
• Songtrust’s 7 Simple Ways to Hone Your Songwriting Skills
• Songtrust’s 5 Simple Ways To Conquer Songwriter’s Block
• Struggling with lyric writing? Try Seven Easy Steps to Write Hit Lyrics
• Study what not to do: What are the Worst Lyrical Cliches All Songwriters Should Avoid?
• 5 Effective Methods To Writing Songs With A Band
• 13 Top Songwriting Twitter Resources
• Well, there’s always musical dice.
• When all else fails: google for songwriting inspiration and you’ll find a host of sites with additional tips, such as SongwritingLab and others.

Here’s Jon Mattox’s wonderful 33 ways to stay creative:

And here’s David Foster’s top ten tips for songwriters:

Here’s some interesting songwriter interviews and other resources that I’ve found inspiring:

• Itaal Shur (thanks @musiccoaching)
• John Mayer talks songwriting at Berklee (thanks @songschool)
• Paul Simon on Songwriting: I Know What I Know (thanks American Songwriter magazine)
• Frank Sinatra: The Stories Behind His Songs
• Jonathan Mann, on Songwriting and YouTube
• The Story Behind the Song: Adele’s “Someone Like You”
• Paul Epworth, on Producing Adele
• 25 Great Songwriters on the Art of Songwriting
• Five Unusual Songwriting Tips from the Beatles
• 52 Songwriting Tips from the Beatles
• Bonnie McKee Shares Her Songwriting Secrets