punching writer's block in the throat

so if you've ever had to deal with writer's block, you know how much it sucks. constantly wanting to write something down, to get your emotions on paper but every time you try nothing comes to mind...it's one of the worst feelings. writing, even my crappy songs, keeps me from going insane because otherwise, i don't talk about my emotions...ever. ask the gf how hard it is to get me to talk, she'll back me up on that last statement.

so maybe some of you are wondering, so what? you can't write, what's the big deal? it's not like it's your day job or something. well writing is my therapy and writer's block keeps me from having said therapy so things start building up, it's not good. and once things start building up, my brain does this weird thing where it'll take the smallest negative thought and run through a list of hypotheticals and then take those hypotheticals of the hypotheticals and it turns into a vicious cycle to where i end up getting worried/stressed about something that'll probably never happen. yea........i'm strange. i wish i could stop that, but it's gotten a lot worse as i've gotten older.

this isn't to say that i just run around all day in a conflicted state where i can't say anything but when i really want to write, and i mean really want to write, it's when it hits. so too combat this crippling writer's block, i've thought of a couple of techniques i'm gonna try.

1. stop censoring myself
i'm sure this seems odd, but even when i'm just writing for writing's sake, i censor myself constantly. i worry about being too blunt because i don't want the person i'm writing about to hear it (assuming its a song i send out to the interwebz) and feel bad. but i need to stop and just write exactly how i'm feeling and if need be, apologize later. i do a pretty good job of not holding grudges (unless you're one of the exes that cheated on me, then you can eff off)so it wouldn't necessarily be how i feel about that person overall, just at that time.
2. write a story
this is the one that i'm most excited about. when i say story, i don't mean a novel or anything but before i start on a song, write down a plot line, characters and emotions i want to portray. then maybe add in environment details (i.e. type of town, description of the scenery). Writing the story from the outside in and not necessarily trying to write down my personal feelings could help out a lot when i do NEED to write down my thoughts/emotions.

3. learn other songs
i use to learn other artist's songs all of the time but in the past couple of years, i've stopped. i need to start this up again. this will just lighten up some of the pressure i put on myself and will also help with ideas for chord progressions, melodies, etc...

i don't know if any of these will work but they're worth a shot. i want to be able to express whatever emotion i may be feeling so i'm not always holding it in...fingers crossed!

Posted in: music,songwriting,writer's block