Don't Give Up Songwriting... Just Give Us 15 Minutes

[00:02] creative work if no one hears it what stops US doing our best work and what is the difference between those who succeed in writing songs and making music over the course of their entire lives and those who give up if these questions

[00:16] night stick with us because in this video we want to share with you one book that addresses these three questions in such a profound way that it has changed the way we write songs and make music and has fundamentally changed the way we

[00:30] think about making creative work the book is Art and fear by Bales and orand David Bales and Ted orand wrote this book in 1993 both of the authors are art

[00:42] makers themselves as well as teachers of art and art practice the key question that this book addresses with such sensitivity and Nuance is really how do sensitivity and Nuance is really how do you maintain Focus discipline motivation

[00:56] self-worth and a sense of value in your own making not only over the long term but often in the face of making something and having its reception by the world be perhaps less than what you had hoped and dreamed for that work and

[01:11] importantly how do you find joy in the work that you make and sustain that work regardless of how well it's received by other people we can't possibly do this to share with you today are three key takeaways and talk about how you can

[01:27] apply these principles to your own creative work and songwriting number one creative work and songwriting number one focus on the process not the outcome to all viewers but yourself what matters is the product the finished artwork to you

[01:42] and you alone what matters is the process the experience of shaping that artwork the viewer's concerns are not your concerns although it's dangerously easy to adopt their attitudes their job is whatever it is to be moved by Art to

[01:58] be entertained by it to make a killing off it whatever your job is to learn to work on your work this quote beautifully sums up one the whole book and that is this idea of finding nourishment in the work finding

[02:14] intrinsic value and reward in the doing not worrying about the outcome one of the parts of that quote that I love the most is the idea that these two things are dangerously easy to conflate with each other it's so easy to trick

[02:29] yourself into finding value in your work in its reception in the response of other people in likes in streams in views in monetary reward but I think what's so important is understanding that the value of creative work is so

[02:44] far beyond any dollar amount or any stream number amount there is so much value in the doing of the work itself and a big part of this is understanding there are things you can't control you can't control how people will feel or

[02:58] respond you you can control your own process and this is really what the authors of this book dig down on they talk a lot about your relationship with your work your relationship with your own process and what they seem to care

[03:12] loving relationship with your own process so that you can keep doing it regardless of what other people think one of the key ideas that comes out of this that has been so valuable to me and us as songwriters is the idea that the

[03:26] success of your work is really in what it teaches you about your own work and what it shows you that you can work on next the function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction

[03:42] of your artwork that SS and they really talk about this a lot in the book that no one artwork or no one creative work is that important creating they're all just stepping stones they're just a piece of the

[03:57] songwriting specific ially one of the things that we encounter so much both in ourselves and also the many many hundreds and thousands of songwriters that we interact with is ways in which songwriters self-sabotage by actually

[04:10] judging their work too quickly by being inside the process but shutting it down flourish or become something that songwriting process they've written half a song but suddenly they kick in with

[04:24] hoping the song would be compared to what it is at this moment and when that that critical judgmental voice starts to evaluate any piece of work according to the absolute Pinnacle of your taste Suddenly It's really really easy to just

[04:38] shut the whole thing down and say look if I can't be exactly this thing that I want it to be is it worth doing at all and the painful result of this is just folders full of half-fish songs and we hear this frustration so often that

[04:51] got a lot of great starts they just don't have many finished songs the truth is that the piece of art which seems so profound right in its finished state may earlier have been only inches or seconds away from Total

[05:06] collapse the point being that we need to finish to find out because sometimes in the middle of the process we don't know or we feel like it's not going very well and then literally moments later it's all going really well and we do not want

[05:20] create something beautiful create something we're proud of by feeling well and pulling out of the process too early early number two learn how not to

[05:35] quit basically those who continue to make art are those who have learned how to continue or more precisely have learned how not to quit I love this quote and this moment so much because I think it really tracks beautifully onto

[05:50] the reality of making creative work over the long term which is that making creative work over the long term is not this continued consistent flourishing of this continued consistent flourishing of creative Epiphany and bursting joy and

[06:04] good though that sounds sounds pretty good but it just doesn't actually exist over the long term what we do need is a sense of craft and discipline we do need to have tools and processes that we can rely on in those moments where

[06:18] inspiration is off having a nap and this really begs the question and prompts us all to ask this question of ourselves how do we not quit what do we need to do what practical steps can we take what processes can we engage to stop us

[06:33] who has tried to do this anyone who tries to write songs or make art or knows that you go through up and down periods and the down periods can feel pretty bad and if we throw into the mix pressure that comes from working in

[06:48] you're not getting the feedback you'd love or you're feeling despondent about your own work through critical analysis that makes it even harder so this we not quit how do we develop a relationship with our own work that

[07:03] feels joyful enough to want to keep going this is a big question I think the other question is how do you keep going past your early 20s when you're full of ambition and fantasy and to a certain extent an amount of delusion about what

[07:15] a career as a musician or a songwriter could potentially look like like what if that doesn't work out what do you do at that moment do you just give up or is this all just being really philosophical and reflective they give some really

[07:28] practical tips on how you can maintain and sustain your motivation and your desire for doing this work over the long term one of the things that I really appreciate in this book is the idea of finding a venue for your work now venue

[07:41] does not mean a pub on the corner it doesn't mean a stage or a theater it's not like venue in that sense what they mean is somewhere for your work to go and if it's not going to be a physical venue we have to ask the question of

[07:55] songwriting group it could be a space where you share your work with other writing to a brief or responding to a brief and putting forward your work for consideration the main thing here is to think about where your music can go so

[08:10] inside you it's about giving it some sense of purpose some sense of motion because the opposite can be very demotivating another way we can think about venue is giving yourself deadlines and due dates and really committing to

[08:24] and due dates and really committing to that in some kind of public way that institutes account ility into that process so it might be actually announcing to whatever Community you have around you that you are going to

[08:36] have around you that you are going to release an EP by this date now of course that should be reasonable and achievable but by actually setting that date you put the wheels in motion and really another way to think about venue is

[08:48] community it's about having people around you that you can share your work with so that the process of creating your work doesn't feel so isolating so you don't feel so alone in what you do another huge reason people seem to quit

[09:01] is perfectionism or they identify as being perfectionists and they site perfectionism as the reason they can't finish their songs or or they can't keep going or it's not quite what they wanted it to be and so they stop but

[09:15] perfectionism as we all know is really just fear of failure kind of dressed up pretty anel Adams was right to require Perfection is to invite paralysis believing that artwork should be perfect you gradually become convinced Ed that

[09:29] you cannot make such work you are correct sooner or later since you cannot correct sooner or later since you cannot do what you are trying to do you quit and in one of those perverse little ironies of Life only the pattern itself

[09:42] achieves Perfection a perfect death spiral you misdirect your work you stall you quit what I love about this chapter in little bit of detail about the difference between stopping and quitting

[09:58] and really about this idea that stopping is a natural part of the creative process quitting is definitive quitting is fundamentally different from stopping the latter happens all the time quitting happens once quitting means not starting

[10:13] again and art is all about starting again I love this quote so much art is all about starting again because it really acknowledges the inevitable EB and flow the ups and downs that is just part of any creative process some weeks

[10:28] you flying you know the ideas are flowing you can't imagine the ideas ever drying up and then next week it's all stopped you're dry and you can't really imagine where the next idea is going to come from stopping and stepping away and

[10:44] then coming back to your process coming back to your craft this is part of what back to your craft this is part of what we do this is inevitable three focus on we do this is inevitable three focus on doing your best work not on pleasing

[10:56] others fears about making art fall into two families fears about yourself and fears about your reception by others fears about yourself prevent you from doing your best work while fears about your reception by others prevent you

[11:11] from doing your own from doing your own work wow the title of the book is Art and fear and the authors do not shy away

[11:25] from talking about what fear really means and in this quote we hear two really deep and fairly heavy Concepts laid out and the consideration for the artist or the songwriter really is significant here like what stops US

[11:39] doing our own work these are probably two challenges that you never stop trying to overcome so let's address this idea of fears about ourself like what is that and where does that come from the biggest fear I think that we and

[11:53] songwriters have about ourselves is that we don't have enough Talent we don't have the Factor we don't have the it that is going to help us achieve some vision of success that we have for ourselves there is probably no clearer

[12:07] waste of psychic energy than worrying about how much talent you have and probably no worry more common the world is filled with people who were given natural gifts sometimes conspicuously fleshy gifts yet never produce anything

[12:23] and when that happens the world soon ceases to care whether they are talented what is so impactful to me about this idea is that the real question is not how much talent you were given the real question is how much motivation do you

[12:38] question is how much motivation do you have to establish habits discipline and craft that actually cultivate whatever Talent you do have and this is why is why they spend so much time talking about process and sustaining that

[12:52] process because really that is a far bigger determinant of whether or not you create work that you can be happy with than Talent so let's come back to the second fear from that earlier quote and look at how worrying about how well your

[13:05] work is received can prevent you from doing your own work and this begs the question who are you making the work for or why are you making the work we understand that part of songwriting and part of building a career in this space

[13:17] is you know serving an audience are you making the work for other people and certain Trends or are you making the work that really feels good and authentic and real to you becoming an artist consists of learning to accept

[13:32] yourself which makes your work personal and in following your own voice which makes your work distinctive the tension here though is distinctive the tension here though is that it's a very natural and innate part

[13:45] of making this kind of work songwriting that really wants an audience that really wants that connection and that communion with other people I think a lot of songwriters start songwriting and continue songwriting because of that joy

[13:59] and profound experience you have when you make something that connects with someone else when you kind of write something authentic and really hit that spot and then that moment happens with someone else where your truth touches on

[14:14] someone else where your truth touches on their truth and in really valuing yourself and being able to express that thing someone else feels seen and heard and that is actually the magic of what we're doing so the tension here is not

[14:28] saying you know ignore audience and that the audience and reception and the connection with an audience is irrelevant it is relevant but I think what they really trying to say is that to do it over the long term focusing

[14:40] more on the process and more on establishing and developing your own authentic voice and vision and really tuning into that is the thing that will create that connection that we all really want with listeners and I think

[14:54] the really big point that they want to make is that if you let other people's opinions or views of your work stop you making your work this is the real making work is because you want to stop making it for your own reasons not

[15:07] because of how well or how poorly your work is received acceptance and approval are powers held by others both acceptance and approval are quite plainly audience related issues the real talk component of this is that you know

[15:23] we are songwriters talking to songwriters and songwriters like writing songs because they like people listening to their songs I think that that's really important to acknowledge and I think that a lot of songwriters write

[15:35] songs because they might have some dream or ambition of lots of people listening to their songs and it's not a bad ambition it's not that that's inherently negative but I think it's so much more important to really have a sense of joy

[15:52] and worth in the work itself because I think if the reason you are writing songs is to be rich and famous that that's going to dry up real quick and even when you do hear some of these successful and rather famous songwriters

[16:06] talking about their process it's not the money or the fame that seems to keep going is their love of the process it is that they have found a way to continue enjoying what they do regardless of everything else in the end it all comes

[16:21] down to this you have a choice or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices between giving your work Your Best Shot and risking that it will not make you happy or not giving it your best shot and thereby guaranteeing that it will

[16:35] not make you happy it becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty and between certainty and uncertainty and curiously uncertainty is the comforting

[16:48] so we just finish with that yeah yeah yeah that's great okay