Finding your voice as a songwriter is a process. It’s not something you can plan or think about or prepare for, you have to get in and do the thing!

Clarity comes from engagement - you can’t sit back imagining doing the thing and come up with any answers, you’ve got to start.

What drives you to express yourself, what gets you up in the morning, what unique experience or perspective you have, what makes you angry or what you would fight for – these are things you will uncover as you begin to get used to expressing what’s on your mind and how you feel.

You’ll start noticing when you feel strongly about something and make note of it, thinking - “I could write a song about that!”

When you feel intense joy, love or sadness - make a note of what made you feel that way and keep that as fuel for your writing. Even something ordinary and real can become an ode to the small things you appreciate in life.

Finding your voice is about learning to listen to the things that get your blood pumping - those are the things that create emotional reactions in you, and those are the things that will feel so incredible to express in a lyrical way.

watch the below video or read on!

What to write about.

As with anything we create from scratch, the ‘blank white page’ mind block is one we don’t want to dwell on too much. The best idea is to move on from that place immediately.

So what do you want to write a song about? If it doesn’t pop into your head within a few seconds, then move on to an exercise and extract a topic logically.

Ask yourself some of these questions and the answers might give you somewhere to start:

What is your favourite feeling or activity in the whole world?
What are you super grateful for in your life?
What experience have you had that you would do again if you could?
What do people not know about you, that you wish they knew?
What’s the strangest thing that ever happened to you?
What’s your biggest regret? Or alternatively, your biggest hope?
What’s your most romantic experience?

Once you have an answer to one of these questions that you’d like to move on with - start by closing your eyes and imagining yourself in the middle of that situation. Really put yourself there - what can you see? What can you hear? What do you smell? Touch? Taste? Feel? Go through all your senses - and if there’s a sixth sense involved: like an otherworldly, emotional or spiritual element, go there too. Write all these things down on your blank page.

Now, let’s pause here and talk a bit about the point behind this process.

All the best songs come from your personal experience or perspective. No one in the world has the exact same experiences, influences or perspective as you do – so only you can write the songs you’re going to write!...

Unless you try to write a song that isn’t your experience, or your perspective at all but just made up – then you’re effectively trying to put yourself into someone else’s unique position and guess what? You can’t be as good at being them as they can, so why even try?

This is where the saying “WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW” is so true and important for songwriting.

I’ve written songs where I imagined being someone different and it just didn’t work. Sure, imagining myself in a certain situation and writing from there? Yep Ok, kinda works, because I know how I would react in that situation – but pretending I’m something I’m not? It’s never going to ring true - people can smell a fake a mile off!

As Paul Simon says

“It’s very helpful to start with something that’s true. If you start with something that’s false, you’re always covering your tracks. Something simple and true, that has a lot of possibilities, is a nice way to begin.”

So what’s something simple and true that you could share? The world needs to hear it! There are a lot of stories that need to be told and communicating our story through song is one of the oldest and most beautiful traditions we have as humans.

But what if it’s really bad…

The first rule of songwriting is you have to act as if you don’t care when it’s bad. Because at first it will be bad, and at first you will care. But you have to get past a few bad songs to get to the good ones.

Your best song is waiting underneath a pile of mediocre songs - and the only way to get to it, is to write them all.

So the problem is not that you have nothing to write about - because you have plenty of things to write about - just as you have plenty to talk about! You’re just not sure they’re interesting enough, or edgy enough, or relatable enough, or cool enough, or lyric-worthy enough…

Those ‘enough’s will stop you from ever trying if you’re not careful.

So, I say ENOUGH with the ‘enough’s!!

You’re going to write a few mediocre songs and guess what, they’ll feel good anyway!

The only place to start is acknowledging that no one wrote a poignant, original, ground-breaking song on their first go. And start your first song anyway.

"songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings" Dolly Parton.

Don’t take this the wrong way - I’m not trying to discourage you or put down your songwriting potential - because your potential is huge - what I want you to get is that there is no pressure for you to write an amazing song straight away. So just enjoy the process, know that whatever you come up with is incredible for the fact that you are trying something new - there is no rating placed, or grading given to what you come up with.

And as Dolly Parton says -

“Songwriting is a way of channelling feelings and thoughts” about her world, it’s not just about how good it is, but how good it makes you feel.”

Give it a go!

All the very best parts of being a musician are when we have fun with creativity. Once you get going, you might surprise yourself with what you come up with - and once you turn on that tap and open up to receive inspiration - you’ll find it coming in from every direction and you won’t be able to stop yourself!