The productivity of your songwriting process can be a very hard thing to predict at times. Some days it’s like writing songs is the easiest thing to do in the world while on other days it’s an impossible task just trying to put pen to paper.

When this happens, one of the best ways I’ve found to diffuse this creative stalemate is to simply walk away from the song, do something different and came back to it at a later date.

When I mean walk away, I mean take a complete break from your song or the whole process itself. No more going over the song in your head, no more listening to draft recordings and no more playing your guitar or piano either.

Generally, this creative stalemate occurs when you’ve been doing things like over-thinking your songwriting process which will mentally exhaust you because you’re working harder and not smarter with your songwriting process.

This is why creating some distance between you and your song can be the best thing you can do for it because we all know that once your mind becomes stressed and fatigued nothing comes easy for you let alone the next line for your song.

You see, what taking a break does is that it resets your ears, your eyes, your senses, your headspace and your imagination so you can hear, look, feel, perceive and imagine your new song with a completely fresh perspective.

So what do you do in your time off from your song? Well, the short answer is… “Anything you want as long as it’s not songwriting related.”

You can go for a walk, read a book, have a bath, call up a friend, do some gardening, get on with some housework, go for a drive, anything to take your attention away from the creative stalemate you’ve found yourself in.

I can assure you, when you get back to your song (and only you will know when that time is), you’ll be experiencing your song like it was the first time which will make it easier to move your creativity forward towards completion.

Remember, if you’re finding it hard to finish your song, it might just pay to walk away and come back to it when you’re feeling much more relaxed and refreshed.

Peace,

Corey 🙂