February Album Writing Month FAWM 2011

OK, I just signed up. I'm finding the thought of writing 14 songs in 28 days kind of scary, considering I've only written four songs in the past year and a half...
 
That's why you do this Fuzzy ... it's scary, it makes you write more, and you'll be very proud of yourself on March 1 no matter what you finish.
 
I signed up "Lordlogan" :D been meaning to write som songs
 
So who has made progress? I'm 2 days in, 2 songs done! I'm not sure I can keep up that pace, but it's encouraging to make any kind of headway.
 
I have an exercise I teach my songwriting class. I call it five minute songs.
Step 1: Set an arbitrary number of chords to use (no more than five)
Step 2: Set an arbitrary number of lines per verse, per chorus, and how many of each. Ex three, three line verses and two two line chorus's.
Step 3: Set an arbitrary syllable count per line.
Step 4: Pick a Person, a place, a situation, a reaction
Step 5: Put it all together. It is important to stick to the rules that you made for yourself. Do not let this part of the process take you longer than 5 minutes. The key is speed here. Do not judge the work as you are writing either. just let it be born. Who cares if it isn't any good. A bad song is still better than the perfect song that you never wrote. Also, it only took you five minutes to write it, so if it stinks you just write another one.
Step 6: Once it is all written on paper, grab your instrument and preferably something to record it with and play it. Don't stop just play. Make it through the entire thing and love it warts and all. The first few will be pretty tough, but the process gets easier. Do this for a few days and before you know it you will have a wealth of material to mine through for editing and revision. Then you can start making those ok songs into good ones.
I hope this helps.
 
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