CHANGING YOUR ENVIRONMENT

Chances are when you sit down to write, you’re in the same physical location the vast majority of the time. For me, I tend to write in the lounge of my house, and after speaking to dozens of other songwriters, I’ve noticed the same trend – we all choose one place to write, and that just becomes the norm.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with this, and in many cases it comes with a lot of benefits, such as feeling comfortable and prompting a creative state of mind whenever you enter that room. However, when you’re struggling for ideas or suffering from a creative block, it can be a great idea to change your environment. 

This doesn’t have to mean jetting off to a far-flung beach somewhere to write, it can be as simple as just changing rooms in your house for a writing session, or going out to write in the garden if it’s a nice day. Just by temporarily changing the place you choose to write in can help you overcome a creative block, and prompt new ideas, whether they be for subject, lyrics, chord progressions or anything else. 

This idea of changing your environment can apply in other ways too. For example, it may not always be possible or practical to change the place you write in, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still alter your environment. Move the furniture around, change the art on the walls or write in the evening rather than the morning (so it’s dark and artificially lit, or the other way around). 

Similarly, you can listen to a different genre of music, read poetry instead of listening to music or start your composition using a different instrument if you’re able to. Perhaps you could call over another musician and collaborate instead of writing alone, or get someone else to write lyrics while you concentrate on the music. There are a ton of different ways you can alter the environment and feel of where and how you choose to write, but they can all have a similar impact. 

The idea here is to prompt new ideas or approaches, or simply to shake you out of a creative rut, and changing your environment is one of the most effective (and easy) ways of doing this. 

Further reading

Simple changes you can make to your room to make it feel different and fresh: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/advice/a61780/easy-ways-to-freshen-room/