michaelhanson
 Put something down on paper.
 
I think what happens to me, from my own personal experience, I want to continue to top the last song I wrote and if I don't, I am discouraged that it was not as good as previous works.  I am trying to get away from that mind frame and just write.  
 

 
Yup.... fear of failure. It gets to us all.  We write a song we feel was the best ever.... now, we think we have to top it.

To attempt that at a conscious level is nearly impossible, especially at the very beginning of the writing process where the song hasn't even taken on it's own personality yet.

Just write.... like a football player or anyone else in a sport.... just play the game. The amazing game played last week doesn't matter now when you're on the field facing a new team.... or for us writers, a new song.... just play the game... just write....and just have fun. Don't worry about the last great thing you did. It's when you simply play the game or write a song simply for the love of music and the song and being "in the moment" with that song.... that amazing things happen.

I've written hundreds of songs, tunes, and cues.... the ones I think are the best ones are not the ones other people tend to like. In fact, one of my songs that I considered a "throw-away" was the one out of a group of songs submitted to a library that ended up in 2 films and 2 TV shows last year. So go figure. I'd have never picked it as a good song but someone else certainly thought so.

Don't even think about last week's game. Play today's game and enjoy what you're doing,  and the score will take care of itself.

1) Start putting your best equipment up for sale on eBay. If that makes you feel horrible, and you can't go through with it, then you still got it.
 
2) If you still got it, then realize you've got one helluva midlife Chrysler to get through first, plus adding on the physical crapping out of the body. Decide if you are going to let that stop you.
 
3) Consider what you will leave behind, musically. Even though your songs may not really outlive you - they still just might. Sure, the songs we are all writing may NOT be immortal; they might just be the temporary inconveniencing of some electrons. But one day, your songs might help somebody else, even if it's just one person. Or a loved one might come to know you better through your work.
 
4) If you are sad because you don't have the same intensity or desire that you once had, then I think it's OK for us to adjust and resize the size and scale of your dreams as we get older. Typically, downward, and smaller. You won't be the first. It's called "coping" and its very OK.
 
 
Now I realize, the above advice is all really meant for myself, so there you go.
 
 
 
As far as lyrics go, I'd vote for the music being more important - you can get away with twaddle for lyrics, but the tune has to work.
 
Go, man, go.
 
-Tom
 
 

Shambler
 
I think you have similar issues to myself where failing physical fitness and/or unhappy life events lead to being in a state of continuous mild depression and this strangles your 'joie de vivre' and your creative drive.
 
I've found it impossible for the last 2-3 years with both a death in the family and failing health to write anything that I am proud of.
 
It's also true that at our age (late 40's) if we have had regrets about things that happened in the past these can build up and a sense of being over half-way through your life doesn't help with looking forward...typically I dwell on what happened in the past and my ever-closer end of life.
 
If I'm sober I get writer's block, if I'm intoxicated I just re-record stuff I've written before...I enjoy it (because I'm drunk :) ) but it's not very productive.
 
For me, I need to work on my physical fitness, I think this is a major part of why I just exist rather than live (healthy body healthy mind).
 
Reading this back it all sounds a bit morose lol , but maybe it helps some people know that they are not alone in feeling like this and that trying to explore new things may be the key to getting out of this frame of mind.
 

 
Good post, a brave one too.
 
A friend of mine is a highly creative individual and a great songwriter, but in the last 4 years he's suffered so much bad luck and dealt with so many adverse life events that he finds it nigh-on impossible to concentrate on music in any shape or form.

bapu

michaelhanson
Reece is probably the most flexable, but he's is involved with a lot of stuff, with many irons in the fire. Even a few other collaborations.  

Well he's committed to other collaborations. It remains to be seen if actually does anything. 
(ouch!!!! NagBap can sure sting sum times)

DANG!  and I thought I anti-virused that thang! NagBap must be an Am root kit!  

I just watched a documentary of Bobby Womack. Seems he was lost at the end of his life, no longer played music. His daughter spoke of his daily routine being set, same ol' same ol' everyday. The guy had become insular. Then Damon Alburn gets in contact. I liked the Gorillas, but I don't know there collection of work too well, so this surprised me. Bobby had no idea who they were and the Gorillas name made him think of The Monkeys. Luckily his daughter saw the sense and hope in the project and kicked him up the arse. After all the 'Album' presures that recording labels had put on him in the past, collaborating with very different artist and being in the studio jamming and not  worrying about the clock with artists that have more confidence in him than he did, was just what he needed.
 
Watching the Youtube clip after the doc. shows the spark had been re-ignited.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YHTXH2RDMk

Listen to Bernie Taupin's lyrics.  Full of great imagery, adventure, relationships (often).  Elton John is/was nothing without Bernie, it's not like Reginald didn't continue to have success though.  Lesson:  just keep writing even when you feel the jig is up.  Or as they say in jazz:  fake it till ya make it.  If you've studied quartal harmony at all, a good exercise is to play quartal harmonies (arpeggios and scales).  Because so much of our popular music is pentatonic it can free up the mind a little.  That's something I discovered on my own.  If you're only looking for a hook, you'll be disappointed most of the time..just sayin.

Serenarules
The thing is, I have arthritis, high blood pressure, cholesterol, asthma and have had two strokes already. I am on meds for it all, but I gave up my drivers license years ago because of it all. Basically, I do not leave the house.

No lyrics?... I dunno? The quote above seems like a great blues song to me!😉

Hi,
 
This is a difficult subject for all of us, and how any of us deal with it is very tough and sometimes just plain not fun ... but I am a believer that the most important part of it all is ... wanting to change and find something different, and while that happens, learn something else about the mystery of creativity and where it comes from.
 
I can't help say, that for you, it appears that it is too easy, because it is all about the notes and the melodies and the chords that you repeatedly work around ... otherwise, your expression would never get bored, or get tired of saying "I love you" one more time, and mean it again ... are you so callous as to not be able to say that and mean it? If so, then you have some serious inner things to look at and the way you look at music either needs to grow up, and realize that ... mechanics ... is not what it is all about ... it might be for some, and that involves luck ... but for those whose inner life never stops, then saying what you did, is weird, strange, and largely a hint that you have lost interest, because you can not blend your emotions into the notes.
 
You need to find a corner and let it out and cry for a bit.
 
From a writing perspective, if this happens to me, it means that the old way of writing is now boring and a new way has to come about ... thus I intentionally involve myself in all things that are experimental and off its rocker and defy "reason" in any of the arts, as a way to teach myself ... and find out, while at it, what it is that I am looking at, and if possible, how. Nothing within ... NOTHING ... is worth anything to you other than the "how" ... but the problem is that we get stuck on the how and the why, and forget the child like fancy ... just do it ... and it does not matter what it is.
 
I was lucky ... I was exposed to nonsensical and experimental arts, that would be music, literature, painting, and many other things considered art, and realized soon, that trying to "find a meaning", is often the worst dead end there is ... but you also learn one biggggggg badddd lesson, while at it. You learn how to work with the feelings, emotions and sounds ... and this is probably the part that is missing for you.
 
I say invert the way you write ... no more "music" unless you can describe, in its entirety, on a piece of paper, the "complete" thought and feeling you had. And it better not be a song, because the exercise is about a feeling in time, not necessarily a song! Then throw it away. NEVER SAVE IT WHILE EXERCISING. Then do it again. THROW IT AWAY. The point is not to "find" a "method" ... there is no METHOD ... there is only you, a person ... and you simply want to find that inner thread ... but you have to be willing to let it fly and fly and fly, until it becomes easier for you to feel it ... but then, remember ... you have to throw it away ... as the point of the exercise is to teach you to find an inner avenue, and all of these bits and pieces, will show up sooner or later somewhere anyway ... so NEVER EVER feel like you are losing something!
 
If it interests you, check out one of the most experimental directors in theater in the 20th century ... Peter Brook, and specially, watch the film made about actors learning their craft ... "The Tightrope", and realize that the depth of internal concentration is what creates the "music", or any "art" ... and then you have to ask yourself ... do you wish to work that tightrope, or simply, just continue writing yet another song around the same chord and song?
I'm a believer that the greatest trap in music is "form" ... and when you break it, that it is good for you, even if it sounds awful ... so go do something else ... go watch Godard spend his time for 60 years making fun of film traditions and teach you how mechanical film has become and meaningless for almost all of us ... it became a beatoff ... an entertainment ... because we're so detached from it anyway ... as the muse likes to say ... the father and I are no longer one ... and can't be within this environment ... because you have severed the cord to your inner feeling ... you can no longer say "I love you" and mean it ...
 
Best of luck is all I can say ... that situation is tough, and I would have told my own child ... look, it takes a force and feeling and commitment that is a one way street to heaven and hell ... and you have to stop moping about and thinking about it ... you either commit to that love care and attention to your inner self to learn ... or go and say it in yet another vacuous way, that makes you feel empty ... and then look in the mirror ... and ask yourself .. why?
It's never the end of the road, and I always loved the end in one Bunuel film ... people walking away to nowhere, on an empty road ... or the end of a Roeg film ... "sometimes you have to drop your pride to love a woman" (and the man promptly disappears -- suggesting that it was all made up anyway!) ... and if you do not know the difference, between the force and beauty and message in that ... you have no feeling ... again ... you need to look far far away, and into your own galaxy, not just this earth.
 
Let me know when you wake up, and see the world of art and music for what it is ... not just a song! Reminds me of a mystic that said something that at first felt rude, and years later I realized was the reality ... it was about drugs ... and how you either controlled it or the drug controlled you ... and if it did, you are already dead ... and I always shivered at that, but it tells you that the commitment is more a look for an excuse than a reality ... and you have to look inside and find the emotion, beyond a note and a chord ... or these words are meaningless to you, if you even are big enough to read this far.
 
Wish you the best, but there is no other way to learn sometimes ... you have to strip it completely to "nothing" ... before it has any chance to finding its way home! That would be YOU ... not feeling down about what you do with notes and chords and music!

ston
Produce some instrumentals?  Or some music with non-word singing, think: Lisa Gerrard.  She's awesome but doesn't bother with words or meaning in that sense.  Perhaps it is time for you to make a departure from normal lyric-based song composition.
 
I'm 51; I've not yet received the inevitable tap on the shoulder, so it's certainly not time to call it quits!

There is more here than meets the eye ... she is a "student" of the arts of performing and this would include theater and how to interpret words, sounds and movement, although as a performer, movement is not her strength. Her voice is.
 
What she does, goes way back to many other things and experiments in theater and film and 1970's before the arts became commercialized yet again ... which kinda happens only once or twice in the history of the arts in each century -- that is the arts break from the "norm". The 1960's and 1970's will be remembered as the period of art that most defines the 20th century. Same as "romantic" defines another century, or "baroque" defines another century.
 
We can't see past "time" and it's length ... but we have gotten so callous and sick, that we think that music can only be one thing, and this is what film and theater and literature tried to blast off your flipping ideas in the 1960's and 1970's in any way it could, only to find that most people got stuck on the drugs and the clothes and the ... anything ... but what it all meant! The inevitable "plastic" sign.
 
To do what she did with Klaus Schulze, and someone I know saw about 30 seconds and called it crap, is sick ... it tells you how commercialized that person had become, that they did not even have a second of an artistic desire and ability ... to do something ... that no one else could, or has. It takes courage, appreciation, love, and above all ... some kind of inner vision ... that something magical will happen and it will make it all worth while.
 
I call it ... close your eyes, for once in your life and listen ... it's like a poem without words ... and you are hoping to find a meaning and an understanding ... SHUT UP ... close that internal dialogue, and simply allow the humming and lullaby to take you away, like it did when you were a child ... you weren't afraid then ... you went to sleep ... but now ... you can't. You have to justify your own ****!
 
Sometimes, words are not enough ... or that meaningful. You just have to go and do it, not talk about it.

It's all FAKE!!!!!  FAKE, FAKE, FAKE!
 
(or you can simply read *catcher in the rye*).  The saddest thing about adults is that they think they can write songs. :D