How to Write One Song

by Jeff Tweedy

Maybe your internal dialogue sounds something more like this: “I’d really like to be able to maybe write songs someday?” OK. Let me just settle this right off the bat: You are a songwriter! No doubt about it—and definitely as much as I was before I wrote any songs.

As the saying goes, “No work of art is ever finished; it can only be abandoned in an interesting place.”

I find it’s almost impossible to put two words together and not find at least some meaning. We’re conditioned to look for patterns and identify mysteries to solve much more than we are designed to dictate what we’re searching for. I recommend allowing that natural curiosity and our sense-making brains to do their thing.

while it is important to aim at things we’d like to achieve, I truly believe, with songwriting, that being in the “process” has to at least be a goal if not the only goal. For me personally, the writing itself has definitely become the primary goal.