How to Write More Songs (Without Waiting for Inspiration)
There’s a version of songwriting that looks like this: you’re sitting somewhere, inspiration strikes, and a song pours out of you fully formed. You’ve heard artists describe this. You’ve maybe experienced it once or twice yourself.
The problem is you can’t build a writing practice on it.
Waiting for inspiration is a strategy that produces, at best, a handful of songs a year - and usually ones that all sound like each other, because they all came from the same emotional register you happened to be in when inspiration decided to show up.
Here’s a different approach.
Treat writing like a practice, not an event.
The writers who produce the most - and often the best - work are the ones who show up on a schedule, whether or not they feel inspired. They write on Tuesdays. Or every morning before the rest of the house wakes up. Or for thirty minutes after dinner.
The output on any given day might not be good. That’s fine. The point of the practice isn’t to produce a masterpiece every session - it’s to stay in relationship with your craft so that when a good idea comes, you have the skills to catch it.
Use prompts to get out of your own way.
One of the most common reasons writers don’t write is that the blank page feels too open. “Write a song” is a paralyzing instruction. “Write a song that takes place in a specific room, in second person, about something that hasn’t happened yet” is not. Even a simple word like “Farm” can evoke an interesting story and song.
Constraints are generative. They work because they redirect your brain from “what should I write about?” to “how do I work within this?” - and that second question is actually more interesting.
This is the foundation of how TERRA Songwriting Groups work: every week, a new prompt. A phrase, an image, a piece of music from a different genre, a constraint. You have until Sunday. You make something.
Write bad songs on purpose.
This one sounds counterintuitive, but it works. Set aside a session - or a week - where your explicit goal is to write the worst song you can. Make it clichéd, overdone, lyrically obvious. Commit to it.
What usually happens: you stop being afraid of failing, because failing is the assignment. And somewhere in the wreckage, there’s usually one line or one chord movement that’s actually interesting. You’ve written your way past your own self-censorship.
Finish things, even when they’re not working.
There’s a temptation to abandon a song the moment it stops feeling exciting. Most writers have folders full of half-finished ideas - songs that had a good first verse and then stalled.
Here’s the discipline: finish it anyway. Write the second verse even when it’s hard. Get to the bridge. The song might not be good. That’s okay. Finishing is a skill, and it’s one you build by doing it over and over, even when the song doesn’t deserve it.
Write with other people.
Accountability is underrated. Knowing that someone else is going to hear what you wrote this week — and that you’re going to hear what they wrote - changes how you approach a session. The social contract of a writing group or co-writing relationship turns writing from something you intend to do into something you actually do.
TERRA Songwriting Groups are three-week online sessions built around this exact structure - weekly prompts, peer feedback, a closing Listening Circle. $10 per session.