Don’t Fight Your Habits— Add New Ones

GETTING YOUR WRITING BACK ON THE ROAD

Here’s a mistake I caught myself making today, and the story of how I fixed it.

Warning— it’s going to take me forever to tell you what the mistake was. This is a longer piece than usual; I’ve got a lot of writing process discussion in here. A bunch of tips about song structure and contrasting different sections, and rhyming, and then I talk about where I drove into the ditch (because of a bad habit) and how I got my song back on the road (by developing new habits).

Bad habits shut down productivity; good habits can start the Song Factory up again.

🧜‍♀️COLLABORATION ASSIGNMENT:

Sometimes I’m writing to order, for a collaborative project— this means I was given an assignment to finish a song. My collaborator gave me an idea/theme, and some solid melody, and some lyrics to get things rolling.

This is the kind of assignment that feels like manna from Heaven to me. First of all— getting paid. That’s always nice.

Second— I don’t have to come up with an idea. That work has already been done. So I can jump right in— there’s a pretty clear plan in place for the theme, and also the musical feel and flavor.

A situation like this is a gift for a writer. Without the headache of trying to come up with a song idea, you can jump right into finding out if your skills with melody and words are up and running, the way you think they are.

It gives you an opportunity to step back and think about your methods, your guidelines, and what you think a verse, or a chorus, ought to do for a song. And it forces you to think right away about how verses interact with choruses, how music interacts with lyrics, how a lyrical idea should be used differently in different sections, and so on.

So I wrote a chorus I thought worked pretty nicely. I figured I was working with a verse/refrain structure that had been given to me. So the section that needed to happen would have to be different from the verse/refrain, both musically and lyrically.

It’s debatable whether the new section would be a chorus, or a bridge. Verse/refrain structure is like a complete song structure crammed together, which is why a lot of verse/refrain songs have essentially one section and it gets repeated many times. Bob Dylan used this approach in a lot of early songs (Blowin In The Wind), and kept using it.

But he also would add an additional section to that kind of structure sometimes. “Absolutely Sweet Marie” is an example of this verse/refrain plus bridge” structure. The verse/refrain I was given was on the short side, so there would definitely need to be a strong and catchy additional section.

Okay, so I had my bridge, or maybe my chorus. If you’re cooking on your front burner, you come up with a bridge you like enough that it feels like a chorus.

This is a good thing to try to do; make your bridge as strong as possible, so it’s as good as a chorus ought to be.

Mission accomplished, so I turned to the job of writing additional verses.

And here is where the problem stood up, from the chair where it had been sitting and waiting for a good time to interrupt me.

Writing additional verses is always hard for me, because I tend to write one verse and figure “that verse did its job. The song doesn’t really need another one.”

But unless your plan is to write a song that is over in less than a minute— and there’s nothing wrong with doing that, by the way, if that’s what you want to do— a song with one verse usually only needs one or two additional verses. It’s like the legs of a table. If you’re only going to have one leg, that base is going to have to be very very heavy— it’s doing too much work. Additional legs make it more stable.

So, writing additional verses solves a problem, but also creates a few new ones. With additional verses, you have to avoid these two problems:

Saying the same thing you already said

Departing too much from what you were supposed to say

In short, you have to say something multiple times, but somehow each one has to be fresh.

It’s not so easy to do! This is the part of lyric writing that exhausts me the most. It’s a lot easier to find a different lyrical mode and make a chorus or bridge that’s very different.

But it’s harder— very much harder— to come up with variations that are as strong as the first idea, but don’t depart from the tone or message too much.

It’s like those tasks you get from a boss or client where they say do this thing differently, somehow, but I’m not sure how. That’s for you to figure out, and then I’ll decide if it worked.

This sort of thing can make you crazy, but it’s always important to remember— it’s part of the job. Verses have to be written.

🧜‍♀️HERE’S WHERE I RAN INTO TROUBLE

This is where I ran into some ugly winds.

I had several days in a row where I worked on the new verses, always coming back to the reality that the first verse really made its point beautifully. It was a tough job to add new ones that fit.

I managed to hammer and chisel a second one out, but it didn’t come easy. So then I needed a third one. When you have three verses and a chorus, this is a good place to stop and see whether the song is done.

And I’d done a little prep for this last verse; I had some good rhyming words that seem to fit the theme. It’s now a puzzle to be solved— use the rhyming words to generate lines of lyrics.

🧜‍♀️AN ASIDE ABOUT RHYMING

Rhyming is one of your most valuable tools. Effective rhymes grab the listener, they help create an emotional connection. Sooner or later, you’ll have a situation like the one with additional verses.

You have a line you like and now you have to come up with a good line that rhymes with it.

Sometimes I’ll use a method where I have 5 or 10 words that rhyme with each other, and I’ll play around with the ideas those words suggest. I’m shooting for two good lines that rhyme.

🧜‍♀️THE BAD HABIT

The problem for me is— this is the point where I start grousing about the job. It’s the least fun part, because it’s following a formula, solving a puzzle, and agonizing over whether my solutions are any good.

It’s systematic— which is good for productivity, but bad for quality control. It’s got to be done, like washing the dishes in an overfilled sink. But aargh, you’ve already been working on it for a while, and it’s not done yet.

To sum up— I’ve done my job, systematically, so far. The results are pretty good, I think. But I’m getting bogged down, psychologically.

This is the BAD HABIT, by the way.

Instead of doing the work, I’m agonizing about having to do the work. Partly because it’s going to take time and energy, and partly because I’m not sure I’m going to like the result.

When you do this, you’re using energy to shut down productivity, and you’re also making it unlikely that the quality will be any good, once you do go back to work.

Bad habits are tough to get rid of. People who study how habits work tell us that trick is to develop a new habit.

So, instead of trying to ditch a habit, do this other thing. If you remember to do this thing next time the situation comes up, and the next time after that, forever, this will become a habit.

🧜‍♀️THE NEW HABIT

You’re frustrated and grousing because you can’t come up with any rhyming lines that are good enough to fit.

Try this. Look at what you have already, and remember my fortune cookie axiom:

Every song is always almost done.

If you’ve got the verse problems I’m grousing about above, that means you’ve got two verses and some good brainstorming towards a third.

So, if it times out anywhere near 2:30, you’re very close to being done. You only need one additional verse, and you’ve already kicked around some ideas for the lyrics.

And you’ve got a nice bridge, or a nice chorus, or whatever the hell it is. You should be happy!

🧜‍♀️SOME OTHER SITUATIONS YOU MAY RUN INTO

Here are some hypothetical other situations that may apply to where you are in a song, and some quick tricks to develop the new habit. No matter where you are in a song, it’s easy to get frustrated because of the struggle to do whatever you’re trying to do.

It’s good to write your way out of a challenge. Meaning— some part of the song is set, and it’s hard to come up with additional stuff that will fit. Forcing yourself to keep trying to solve the puzzle makes you better at this writing business. So, the good habit in that situation is to make lists of what you have that works, and feel good about having that much. Whatever you’re struggling with, it’s probably one of the hard things. Naturally you’re struggling with it— it’s not easy. Struggling is part of the job— it’s only bad when you start worrying that the struggling means you aren’t any good, or the song isn’t any good, etc.

Once you feel a little better, it’s easier to dive into the hard work again. I’m lazy, and I don’t like having to work hard. But having hard work ahead is NEVER as hard as worrying that I won’t be able to cut it. So, work on the habit of accepting that sometimes you have to struggle for the good stuff.

Another problem that happens— you can’t figure out how to write yourself out of a challenge, and you think there’s no other solution.

My recommendation is to treat every situation where it’s your song, and you’re the boss— where it’s not a collaboration, or an assignment— treat these situations as ones where anything can be adjusted. It’s good to force yourself to work through a challenge, as I’ve said. But it is NOT good to burn yourself out trying to do the impossible. Sometimes changing a good line can make it easier to write five more good ones. Sometimes not changing something will freeze a song.

Let me sum up, with a few good habits to work on.

🧜‍♀️GOOD HABITS—

Always try hard to write through a challenge. It’s good for your writing chops to do that. The harder it is, the better it is for your development.

But— also— when a challenge is making you miserable— try looking at good stuff that could be adjusted, and see if that opens things up.

Both of those possible solutions should become habits for you. Neither one is guaranteed to work every time, but the habit that never ever works— the bad habit— is the one where you use up energy and time agonizing over how hard it’s going to be to do the work.