10 Minutes Only #12

today's topic: I DON'T WANT TO WRITE TODAY

ICYMI: I’m starting a new series to help overcome my perfectionism in which I have 10 minutes and 10 minutes ONLY to write something and post it. Please comment topic ideas to keep me going, if you so please! The timer starts now.

I DON’T WANT TO WRITE TODAY!!! I hate when I feel like this. I cut my teeth on songwriting by only writing when I felt inspired, which didn’t happen very often but felt quite intense and overpowering when it did. Since then, I’ve kept that up, spending my time waiting for the Magic Thing to happen again. The time in between feels very lonely.

When people ask me if I have any songwriting tips, my answer is normally, “uhhhh…,” because the truth is that most of my best songs were written in a state of total highway hypnosis. (Of course, this way of creating is at best unproductive, and at worst debilitating. Obviously, I’m trying to change that - see: this whole series I’m doing - but it’s definitely been testing me!) It’s either I enter a miraculous, dissociative fugue, or I torture myself by painstakingly eking work out over long stretches of time. Usually, something great comes out of it, but it is not sustainable. I am nowhere near as prolific as I would like to be, or as anyone on my team would like me to be, and it kills me. I just still have so much trouble getting out that first draft! I write as though there’s a gun to my head, and if something as inconsequential as a substack post (no offense) feels less than perfect it drives me crazy.

Like, right now, time is up. But this is so short, and I feel already like I’ve failed at my own goal; I spent these past 10 minutes reading through, pausing to think, changing sentence structure, etc. But this is my own form of exposure therapy. And tonight I will have to deal with sending something just okay into the world. Here goes!