Hello, and welcome to the Songwriting Study Hall. On this hub, we will discuss various techniques to overcome those pesky moments (or extended periods of time!) that we all experience in our struggles to yank songs from within- the doldrums, the frustrating dry spells of songwriter's block. So grab your musical instrument, a pen and a notebook and we'll dive right in!

1. The Golden Key to Songwriting: Creating a "Personal Mythology"

The most useful advice I have ever recieved as a writer came from a teacher, who hammered into me the importance of developing a personal mythology. Your mythology is the artistic representation of everything in your entire life. It is all of your experience seen through the lens of personal analysis. The personal mythology should be a representation of how you understand your experiences, and what/how your experiences add up to meaning. So how exactly does one go about developing a personal mythology? It's a lot of work, but the good news is... it's also a lot of fun!

Step 1- Draw a map of your childhood home. This is a great excercise to get the juices flowing. Start at your old bedroom and work your way out. Include as many details as you can, make notes as you go, annotate your drawing. Jot down location specific memories. Let it get messy. The more ink or led you get on the paper, the better. For example, "tree struck by lightning, found burried matchbox car here," and so on. Don't worry about the organization during this phase. Just get as much detail down as you possibly can, and keep going. When you've exhausted the house, work your way out to the yard, the road, the end of the road and outskirts of town, the distance- as far as you want to go. Also, remember that distortion is okay. If something doesn't match up exactly with reality, that's fine. Actually, it's great. Distortion is a natural function of memory, so don't feel obligated to get everything just as it was in reality. What is important here is the flavor, and if a distortion enhances the flavor, go with the distortion. In your drawing this could mean including or projecting other experiences onto various locations or blending experiences. It could involve distorting the boundary between a dream and reality. In your personal mythology, a dream is every bit as important as an actual experience, because it has the potential to carry just as much meaning and flavor.

 Step 2- Ok. So here you are, your scribbly, jumbled mess of a personal mythology sprawled out on a piece of notebook paper in front of you. All of this is raw data for your art. It is your job as an artist to figure what it means, or what you wish it to mean. This is the organization phase. This is where you put it all together and figure out what it means, piece by piece. You can always add to the map, whenever you wish, and in this way the personal mythology becomes a sort of in-exhaustible well-spring.

So what does it all mean to you?

How do you make this "raw data" into a song?

Many songwriters  have used the personal mythology blatantly, as was the case with Neil Young's somewhat recent "Greendale" album. The cover of this album show's the map of Young's mythological town...