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Tricks To Beat Writer's Block

Write 10 Songs In 60 Minutes – There is no more powerful way to completely shut off your Writer's Blog problems any faster than sitting down with a stop watch and cranking out 10 songs (a verse and chorus at least). Try it. I GUARANTEE that you will beat Writer's Block and you will come out with 1 song worth keeping out of the deal.

Avoid Your Genre – I remember reading a Guitar World article on Ozzy Osbourne. All of his favorite songs had absolutely nothing to do with “metal”. Metal was a genre he helped create. In other words, he just made noise and people liked it. He didn't try to recreate his favorite music. He simply made his own. Our modern culture with all it's genres implies that you are supposed to be a “rock band” or a “country band”. I recommend writing as many songs outside of your genre as possible. (Once you write 10 R&B songs. Post on the forum. I'll help you turn them into nu-metal masterpieces).

Enjoy Writing Crappy Songs – Don't just tolerate writing bad songs. LIKE IT! I'm serious. Writing ANY song should be fun. Again, we are focusing on enjoying the process of writing and not worried about the result.

Hum Soul Songs While You Cook – I always try to do my Aretha Franklin impression when I cook. It ends up sounding more like a bad dream with Prince, but you get the idea. I should definitely keep my tape recorder in the kitchen. This is where all my best melodic ideas come.

Listen to Greatest Hits Albums – Pat Benetar and Human League are some of the best examples. Why? Because they have some great songs and they have some the most disgusting, vile sounds ever captured on their Greatest Hits. This illustrates that it's okay to write a bad song. It may end up on your greatest hits album some day!

Brainstorming - When you open your brain all the way up, it's amazing what happens. When you have no care in the world whether you are wrong or right, not dealing with ambition or ridiculous assumptions, and simply get your brain to go go go, you can do miraculous things. It's important to just open up and let loose. HAVE THE BALLS TO BE WRONG! It's okay. Write a terrible song and laugh about. Then write a funny song about how you wrote a bad song on purpose (it sounds like something that Tenacious D would )