Linda Connell Studley

“Write what you know” seems like good advice but it really doesn’t go far enough. At first glance it would seem to mean that all your songs should be autobiographical. Well, we know that can’t be right because if it were, most songwriters would be too busy recovering from their lives to write anything down!
‘Writing what you know’ infers something more. It encourages us to keep our eyes, ears, and hearts open so we can ‘know’ more. Your powers of observation are a first class, all expense paid ticket to song material. We can ‘know’ things through an empathic connection to the world around us. We see how cruelly someone treats their family and we think “It ought to be a crime.” You can leave it at that or put it to music and call it a song.
Take every experience, every tear, every laugh, every funny episode or tragic event and examine it for inspiration. Examine it for the universal feelings that speak to us all on some level. Love, fear, hope, pain, joy, betrayal, revelation and the list goes on. Harnessing the essence of human emotion makes for powerful lyrics. Even if your life is calm and uneventful, look around you for inspiration. Indeed, coming from calmness, you may be able to interpret the maelstrom more insightfully than someone at its core. Write what you know. Just open your eyes, ears, and heart and ‘know’ more.

There’s always a temptation to procrastinate, even when you enjoy songwriting and sometimes even because you enjoy it. We often feel unreasonably guilty over spending time doing something we enjoy. We tell ourselves we should be doing the laundry or mowing the lawn or something else ‘more important’. Well, no, we shouldn’t. If we have the inspiration to write we should definitely write. This isn’t a justification to avoid all chores it’s just a matter of understanding priorities.
One reason we put off writing is the little voice that makes us feel guilty about being creative. Yep, it’s the inner critic again. The trick is to bypass the critic. Sometimes just being aware of its tactics will allow you to move past it. If that fails maybe you should do the laundry or mow the lawn! Seriously, often doing rote tasks, particularly ones that involve a rhythmic aspect (thumpety-thump goes the dryer, round and round the yard you push the mower) will lull the critic to sleep and allow your creative side to come out and play.
Lines, melodies, or even whole songs have come to me when I am walking, or raking, or vacuuming. Driving alone is a great time get creative. Don’t listen to CDs or the radio; listen to the vehicle. It’s alive with terrific beats and rhythms. My song “Breathe” started from the slap-slap of the windshield wipers.
Eventually we become more aware of our creative side and we allow it to unfold; no guilt, no expectations, rules or deadlines. We give ourselves permission to be creative and suddenly there’s all the time in the world.

“The song is already written; you just have to remember it.” That belief changed my whole approach to songwriting. I used to agonise over writing. I enjoyed it but there was always an element of apprehension. “How will this song end?” “What if it sucks?”
That’s the inner critic talking. A necessary aspect of our personality, our inner critic stops us from doing potentially dangerous things. But the critic can also be a first class killjoy when it comes to being creative. To the critic, all unfamiliar ground is dangerous. So it’s just as anxious about you writing a song as it is about you going bungee jumping.
My inner critic used to be front and centre all the time, second guessing, interfering, and generally making the whole process more difficult and less fun than it should have been. Accepting that the song already exists (maybe not on your page, but in the universe somewhere) means there are no doubts that the right word, the perfect rhyme, the excellent hook exist. You don’t have to invent you just need to remember. Remembering doesn’t kick in the inner critic like inventing does. Your attitude to writing and being creative is crucial. If you do not believe yourself worthy of being an artist, you will continually find yourself blocked, externally and internally. Believe in yourself and the universe will conspire to help you at every turn. It’s also very reassuring to know the universe is taking care of your songs until you need them.