We are our worst enemies when it comes to creativity. There are many ways we get in our own way, from the mundane to the metaphysical. Here is a list of what I do to curtail, if not slay entirely, the demons of self-sabotage.
You need a space where everything is already set up & ready to go. Nothing fancy. A chair with a table & an outlet. Preferably any instruments that need electricity are plugged in & the only thing between you and sound is a power switch.
Coffee. Or his lesser cousin, tea. Morning has always been my favorite time of day. The time when I am most brimming with hope & potential. I haven’t been corrupted, drained or distracted by the cold hard facts of the day yet. With coffee, anything is possible. The critical mind is muted for a few hours. I feel invincible. My ideas are worthy & true. My voice is clear & intent. My thoughts are still saturated with dreaming, but my mind is sharp & focused. I go through phases of trying to quit, knowing & not liking that I’m addicted. I’ve gone through sobering spells without it & they’ve always led to unhappy days of simply going through the motions, doubting myself at every turn. For now, it is my ally, my ritual medicine.
Don’t set out to write a great song. This will destroy you from the start. You’ll never get anything off the ground as everything at the beginning feels less than it could be. In fact, set out to write a terrible song & maybe you’ll surprise yourself.
Write a complete song. John Lennon said, “When you're writing, try to finish the song immediately, because once you leave it it's going to be harder to complete”
I have found this to be the absolute truth. If I have some momentum on a melody, maybe a verse & chorus are budding with some lines coming through I do my best to fill it out. Something about completing the building & removing the scaffolding makes it real. It is a magic I don’t understand. The words can be trash. You can always go back & change every single thing about the song, but complete the piece with the energy you were sitting in when it first came. It accomplishes some magic that I don’t & don’t need to understand.
Write a short song. I love a one minute song. You can cover a lot of ground in one or two minutes. It’s why I like writing songs more than essays. You have no choice but to work with very little & when you ask for a little bit you’ll be surprised at how much rises up to meet your humble request.
Ask to be a channel. You can ask the sky, the sun, the ceiling or the source, but just ask. I sit for a minute with my left hand open toward the sky & my right hand down envisioning a bright golden light coming into my left hand and passing through me out of my right hand as an opalescent clear light. I have no idea if this actually does anything, but it helps my small, critical mind step aside in the hope that something greater will step through.
Write to learn, not to teach. People often ask if I write the words of songs before the music. I have never tried because the fun & catharsis of writing a song is being surprised by what unveils itself to me while letting my voice surf along the sound of a tone, a chord, a beat. I don’t go into writing knowing what I want to say or trying to proselytize my point of view (though that often happens :/.) It’s more of an archaeological process. I learn what’s buried there just beneath my conscious mind that’s wanting to be said. I learn how I feel, how to feel, how I think about the world and how to distill & relay all of it.
Keep the house clean. Clutter is antithetical to creativity. For me. I know many artists and writers who thrive in the midst of great whorls of matter. But for me, any dish in the sink or extraneous out of place thing is the perfect opportunity to distract myself. I will use any excuse not to make something and cleaning the house is an easy one. I tidy in the afternoons and evenings only - after my writing hours are over. Writing a song is a figurative cleaning process. It’s an act of placing all the scrambled contents of my brain back onto their correct shelf. It is a task of organization more than anything else. Moving puzzle pieces from a scattered heap into a completed painting.
Anyone can write a song. A child can write a song. A tone deaf person can write a song. A bird can write a song. You can write a song. You don’t need to be able to play an instrument. You can play notes on a piano without understanding what the notes are. But if, for a moment, you can’t write a song…
Write a letter, stamp it & mail it out. I swear. This works. I can be deep in the existential panic of I will never be able to write a song again, and if I can make myself cogent enough to remember this one note I will recover swiftly & without tears. Something about handwriting a letter to someone far away works to slice through the weeds of apathy, demoralization & self-pity. It makes you focus. Where am I, what’s the weather like. It brings you back to the mundane world, back to your senses in a healthy way. If I’m feeling especially romantic I put on a dress, light a candle & pretend I’m Emily Bronte or Dickinson up in a drafty attic room with a gabled window, so far away from friend, only the birds in the summer garbed trees to sing me onward.
The song above is an example of something I wrote very fast using these principles after months of not writing anything due to tour and traveling. I had a true fear that I’d never be able to write again and this little slip of a song reassured me I can still write something and gives me the needed hit of enthusiasm to continue on.
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