HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE SONGWRITERS

Here are some habits that I’ve noticed are common to highly effective and successful songwriters. The first step toward becoming a professional songwriter, or for this matter for becoming a successful person in any industry, is to learn to think and behave like one. Here are the common habits I see in my friends who are successful songwriters.
 
They are always on the lookout for great ideas. Their antennae are always up when they watch movies, read books, or just in everyday conversations. They are constantly looking for anything that is said in a unique and interesting way. The ideas they have for a song might not necessarily be their own real-life experience, but it is a unique idea for sure because they had already paid enough attention to what is going on around them and they had selected the best ones. Being sharp and trying to always be notified of what is going on is an important key here.

They write regularly. Even if it’s every Saturday morning for an hour, they make writing a habit. They establish some sort of regularity and routine that works for them. They stick to that routine pretty closely. This way they train their brain to always be prepared. As I had mentioned many times, consider your brain as a muscle and same as any other muscle on your body, it needs to be constantly trained, specially in that particular way you want to use it for a living.
 
They show up. Even when they don’t feel like writing, they write. They know that writing success comes from consistency over time. They are going to keep putting the butt in the chair until they reach their goals. They wouldn’t make ridiculous excuses to justify their laziness, in fact they usually do not have any laziness in their life, and they are pretty committed to what they are doing.
 
They own the muse. Successful writers are not at the mercy of the muse. They schedule times for her to show up and they expect her to do so. Learning to be creative on demand is a HUGELY important skill for songwriters if they want to succeed.
 
They won’t give up. They learn to get satisfaction from the act of creating itself and they refuse to give up. They will keep writing, because they love to write. They don’t just simply give up because the situation is “tough” on them and they understand that they have to work the hardest they can they still have a big chance for getting rejected. Rejection and learning how to deal with it is a very big part of this industry and they understand it pretty well. If any songwriter wanted to give up after the 1000th “NO” they hear, by now there was no more songwriter left on this earth! Even for the biggest names you can imagine, they still have to deal with rejected on an almost daily basis.

Author

Hangi Tavakoli is our in-house established and professional music producer with 20 years of experience in songwriting, music production, mix and mastering. He has written and produced more than 5,000 published songs to-date, including some major hits in international scale.