letter to a young songwriter

I recently read Letter to a Young Songwriter by Visakan Veerasamy, and many parts resonated with what I've been writing and thinking about recently. Here are some quotes:

Strive to be prolific.

Notice I didn't say 'aim to be great,' or 'just have fun'. Both of those are stupid directives, because they're overly vague. And trust me, the two most frustrating things you can get caught up in are "Will I be great? Am I good enough?" and "Am I having fun?" You have a far greater shot at tasting greatness and fun if you simply write as much as you possibly can, and then some.

I keep coming back to this. In my opinion, being prolific is underrated – the more you try, the more fun you will have, the more you will build your style and taste, the bigger a target you become for luck. You can (and should) just do things.

Avoid trying to be original; learn other people's songs instead.

All great artists start out producing derivative work. There's no other way to learn!

"At an art school where I once studied, the students wanted most of all to develop a personal style. But if you just try to make good things, you'll inevitably do it in a distinctive way, just as each person walks in a distinctive way. Michelangelo was not trying to paint like Michelangelo. He was just trying to paint well; he couldn't help painting like Michelangelo." – Paul Graham, Taste for Makers

Every thought I've had is based on something – an inspiration, a conversation, an idea I absorbed somewhere. Nothing really comes from nowhere. Originality might not be about creating from nothing, but about experiencing a lot and remixing.

Consume content extensively and thoughtfully.

This goes back to connecting the dots. Watch lots of movies. Read lots of books. And this is maybe the most important part – write down your thoughts about them. Try to capture them in song, if you like.

I had just written about this! Taste is something that develops through exposure and evaluation. You consume something, then pause and ask yourself: do I like this? Why? Why not? Consuming "extensively and thoughtfully" is the same idea.

Have some records of what you thought about things at a certain time in your life. The main reason for this is so that you can look back at them years later and see how much you've grown and changed as a person. I think that's very fundamental to appreciating life, and music, and expression of any kind. A blog is a great way to do this. Notebooks and recordings are fine, if you're shy. (Nothing beats publishing stuff in the public domain, though, because you get real feedback from real people.)

I am a huge fan of writing down what you think about something at a certain time.

I especially recommend reading biographies, and reading about how your favorite artists talk about their creative processes, but always make sure you spend more time creating than reading about creating.

Here are some more highlights from the letter:

Creativity is just connecting things, and to connect things you need two things – a bunch of dots to connect, and the habit of attempting connections. You won't get them right all the time right from the beginning. Nobody does, and there's reason to believe that you'll never quite improve your batting average. You can only just step up to the plate more often. So collect as many dots as you can, and mess around with connections as much as you can. Tinker. Make a mess. Clean it up and start over. – Steve Jobs

Intelligence is the ability to enter a new field and to ask thoughtful questions – Well, what about this? What about that? What if we reversed it? To get good at this, you just need to turn things around and over in your head as much as you can. Take things apart, put them back together. Over time you'll notice that things aren't as opaque as they seem. – Bill Gates

If you're not creating, you're decaying, you're dying, and you're going to start feeling sorry for yourself.