Speaker 1: Hi, everyone. My name is Hannah. I'm a singer-songwriter, performer, and teacher here on Lesson Face. Today I'm going to be talking about 10 different ways to gather inspiration and ideas when you're feeling stuck as a songwriter. Number one, morning pages or journaling. So there's this great book that I love called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. And in this book, she takes you through a 12-week course in kind of unlocking your creativity and unblocking your creativity. And one of the things she talks about is a technique called morning pages. And what you do is right away in the morning when you wake up, you write stream of consciousness for three pages or for 30 minutes, whichever comes first. And you just allow your mind to write whatever comes out. Maybe you even write, I don't know what I'm supposed to be writing about. This is stupid. You know, you can write about anything. It's basically just right away in the morning, getting the creative juices flowing. And it's kind of also like clearing the slate for the day. So it kind of helps you get more open to inspiration and ideas. And of course, journaling, very similar. Just taking some time to write and to write whatever you're feeling, just writing in your notebook kind of helps to get the stress and anything that might be blocking your creativity out of your head and into the paper so that you can open up to receive more ideas. Number two, object writing. So object writing is a great way to get inspiration, especially for lyrics. What you do is you pick an object, really anything. It could be the chair, the plant, the mug, whatever you see in the room around you. And you pick any object and you write about it for either five minutes or ten minutes or maybe even just three minutes. And with as much descriptive imagery and attention to sensory detail as you can. So using sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, even internal sensations in the body or how the body is moving through space, those are some different kinds of things that you can write about. You can also use the object as a prompt for inspiration to just kind of let your mind wander, stream of consciousness, keeping in mind to try to bring in that descriptive imagery as you're writing. So for example, an object, here's an example of an object write. The object was mountain. Mountain rivers wind their way through canyons of my heart. The deep crevices of yearning, the thirst for nature, filling one with nurturing comfort, peace. Tall ridges jut out above me, carving the sky with their peaks. In the distance I hear the howling coyotes sing their songs to the crescent moon. I feel my heart beat faster as I continue climbing up. I listen to the crunch of red rock beneath my feet. The dry, dead pinon tree branches break beneath my weight. Continues on from there. So that's kind of an example of what an object write is. Number three, going on an artist date. So this is another technique that's borrowed from Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way. What you do is once a week or once a month, you take yourself on a date for your inner artist. So if you could talk to that place in yourself that is creative and artistic, what would it like to do? Maybe it would like to take a pottery class, or maybe it would like to go to see a musical or a play. Or maybe it would like to, I don't know, take a trip somewhere. So basically giving yourself the time to nurture your inner artist to just play and do what it wants to do. Number four, going for walks in nature or doing meditation. So this is something that I really love to do when I'm feeling like I'm stuck creatively. Going for a walk in nature without any agenda, except just to be there, to enjoy the day, to notice the birds chirping, the flowers blossoming, kind of gives your mind the chance to just kind of take a break from working and thinking really hard and trying and forcing yourself to write something. Instead, take a break and go walk in nature or meditate. Meditation is similar to walking in nature, kind of giving your mind that break where it doesn't have to be thinking. You can actually just let yourself be for a moment. And when you let yourself relax and be, that opens you up to more possibilities. It's kind of like if your fist, like if you're feeling really stressed and angry, your fist is like this and it's like, ah, I can't come up with any ideas. And then when you just kind of let your mind relax, it's like the fist opens up and suddenly there's, you know, oh, look at this idea. It's like you have the space to hear the different ideas that might want to be coming through. Two meditation apps that I really like are Calm and Headspace if you're interested in doing the meditations. Number five, traveling to a new place or just doing something new generally. This is a great way to get inspiration. You could travel to, you know, you could travel to a foreign country if you want. That's one way to get inspiration. But even just traveling to a new restaurant that you haven't been to or a new coffee shop, doing something new creates new, you know, connections in your brain that weren't there before. Getting out of the routine kind of spark, can help spark that creativity. So doing new things really kind of gets the mind going. Number six, free playing slash improvising. So this is kind of like meditating except with music. So what you want to do is just play without any agenda. You don't have to write a song from it. You don't have to, you know, get anything out of it except just to make the time and space to play. It's similar to morning pages. You can set your timer for a half an hour and just kind of stream of consciousness. Let whatever music wants to flow out of you come out, again, without any attachment to the outcome. So just letting yourself... And who knows what songs may or may not arise from that. But first, the first thing is to let go of any agenda of it, you know, kind of having to be the answer or something to your blocked creativity. Just letting yourself play and flow. Yeah. Number seven, movies, books, and plays. A great place to get inspiration is through stories, through reading stories, through going to a movie and watching a story, through going to a play or musical. And you know, songs are basically little miniature stories in three minutes or four minutes in a musical form. So getting that inspiration, you can get inspiration from a movie. You could write a song about a movie or about a character in the movie or a character in the book. Or maybe the feeling of the book inspires you to create a song that feels similar to the vibe of that book, the play. So that's a great place to get inspiration for ideas, especially for like lyrical content as well. Number eight, processing real life experiences. So one of the reasons if you're feeling stuck, there might be something going on in your life that maybe you need to write about. Maybe you're struggling with something, maybe you don't understand something, or maybe you just have a lot of emotions about something that you haven't processed. Music is a great place to do that. So you can actually use the thing that might be blocking you to help unblock you. You can go to your piano or guitar and play the feeling of what you're experiencing in your life. Imagine that you can play what it is you're feeling. And then you could even sing about it, asking what am I doing, what is the situation, asking questions about what you're feeling through song. I don't know what I'm doing here. Whatever it is that you're feeling, you can actually just sing about it, even if it doesn't sound that great. It's a great way to process those experiences and to get whatever emotions that might be stuck kind of out of you so that you can be more open to inspiration and ideas. Number nine, learn new songs. So a great place to get inspiration, especially for music, for the musical piece, is to learn new songs. Look at a song that you really love, learn it, and look at what makes it work, what's going into all of the pieces that make up this song, all of the chord structure, the chords, what's happening in the lyrics, and kind of taking the time to learn new songs will help you take in those chord progressions, those lyrics, those ideas, and from there you can kind of, it'll kind of give you inspiration for your own ideas, especially when you go to free play. You might start playing a chord progression and realize, oh, that kind of sounds like that chord progression I just learned from that new song. And again, learning new things, it really just kind of helps to get the brain working in a new and different way, which inspires creativity. Number ten, be kind to yourself. Don't let the inner critic take over. So this is a really important one, especially when you feel like, ah, I can't write a song, or there's no way, I'm stuck, I can't write anything, or this sounds really bad. You know, when you're judging yourself, it's really hard to create. If you imagine in the room that there's somebody in the room sitting there saying those negative things, like, oh, that chord progression sucks, and oh, that was a terrible melody, and you know, you wouldn't keep that person in the room. You would be like, okay, dude, chill out, you know, go get a coffee or something. And creating that safe space for your creativity allows for more vulnerability and more risk. Because when you risk, when you have the safe space to risk something, there's a chance that it might not work. And if you're being judged for that, it's really hard to keep risking, versus, you know, make something silly, you make up something silly, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, you know, you're just being a goofball. If that was, if the inner critic was taking over, they'd be like, that's a waste of time, what are you doing? Get to work. Whereas, if you let that inner critic kind of go, you just let the inner child play, the inner creative self, making that space to let yourself play. So that's the, that's the most, one of the most important ones, being kind to yourself as you're creating. So there you have it, 10 different ways to gather inspiration and ideas when you're feeling stuck. Thanks so much for listening, I'd love to hear, how do you get over your creativity blocks? What do you do? Comment below, and if you're interested in learning more about songwriting, check out the links. I'd love to help you learn how to write better songs, and have more fun with your songwriting.