Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making

by Andrew Peterson

A few years ago a woman approached me after a concert. She explained that we had met about ten years earlier, and she had asked me to write some songwriting advice along with my signature on one of my old records. “Oh, no,” I said with a grimace, remembering how much worse my know-it-all tendencies used to be. “What did I write?” She smiled and opened the CD case. There it was in my handwriting, written with a Sharpie: Don’t write bad songs. —Andrew Peterson I blushed. “I’m sorry. What an arrogant thing to say.” “No, it’s okay,” she said. “You explained what you meant—that I should try hard not to settle.” She was being very gracious, because I know I probably felt really cool and edgy writing it at the time. She told me Andy Gullahorn had been at the same show, standing across the church lobby from me. She had taken the CD over to him and asked him to write some songwriting advice, too. “He saw what you wrote,” she said, “and then added this.” She turned the CD booklet over and showed me Gully’s signature. Next to his name he had written, “Write the bad ones, too.” Touché, Gullahorn. I see what you did there. He’s exactly right. And in a sense, so am I. While it’s important to cultivate discernment, to work as hard as possible to do excellent work, to try really hard to make your song not bad, it’s just as important—perhaps more so, in the beginning—to make something, even if it’s not great. Don’t let your inner critic keep you from writing. Know that your songs aren’t go...