Writing songs is a cyclic process.

Sometimes a song will appear to you  and you can get it down with the greatest of ease and sometimes writing songs is like trying to pull teeth out of the mouth of an angry crocodile.

I know that this piece of advice is going to sound counter-intuitive but if you find yourself in the middle of a period where nothing is coming out and because of that, your motivation is very low, the first thing you should do is to stop worrying about it.

We have all been in that same situation (I know I have).

No matter how hard you try there’s still a blank piece of paper staring at you. It makes you feel all angry and stressed inside because you think you should be writing SOMETHING.

Someone said to me early on in my music career that instead of forcing a song that doesn’t want to come out, the best thing to do is to do nothing at all so that’s what I do when I find myself in these situations.

I do NOTHING.

I just find something else to do. I go for a walk, visit a friend, clean the house, read a book, anything that will take me away from the process of writing songs.

The last thing I would want to do is to get all frustrated and upset that nothing is coming out. Doing that will just make the problem worse I mean, how can you be motivated if you’re stressed out all the time?

My advice to you is that in times such as these you need to give yourself a break.

Cut yourself some slack, take some time out to do other things and please, don’t set a time limit on it because the last thing you want to be doing is putting more pressure on yourself to get back into your songwriting.

If writing songs is your passion, you will eventually come back to what you love doing the most. All roads eventually lead to the next song to write

Sometimes the other things in your life need your attention and taking a break to sort those things out is probably just what you need to do at that time.

As John Lennon so eloquently put it “…life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.”

So, if life does get in the way, don’t try to resist it. Just let it pass by and go with the flow of it because once you are clear to write again, you will do it with a renewed sense of vigour and gusto. I guarantee it.

Until next time, keep on writing,

Corey Stewart
All About Songwriting