"Songwriting is kind of like a craft. It's not something that just comes in a dream. You've got to work at it"

Calling songwriting a craft challenges the romantic myth of effortless inspiration. A song may begin with a spark, but the spark is only raw material; shaping it into something singable and durable takes tools, techniques, and time. Like carpentry or pottery, the work demands patience, repetition, and a willingness to fail forward. The dream might hand over a fragment, but craft turns fragments into form.

Craft shows up in concrete ways. A songwriter studies melody, how contours create lift, how motifs repeat with variation. Harmony becomes a palette, understanding how progressions build tension and resolve. Rhythm and phrasing decide where words land, how syllables ride the groove. Lyric work includes scansion, internal rhyme, vowel color, images that carry weight, and the ruthless cutting of clichés. Structure is architecture: verse sets the scene, pre-chorus tilts the energy, chorus delivers the thesis, bridge reframes. Each choice is deliberate, tested against how it feels in the voice and the body, not just on the page.

Work also means process. Showing up regularly, even when nothing “arrives.” Collecting lines, titles, and hooks in a notebook or voice memo and returning to them with fresh ears. Writing more songs than you keep, because volume breeds discernment. Seeking feedback, co-writing, and learning from the canon, an apprenticeship through attentive listening. Revision is not an admission of failure but the crucible where clarity forms. Often the heart of a song appears on the fourth draft, not the first.

The paradox is that discipline creates freedom. When technique is internalized, intuition can roam farther without getting lost. Craft gives you levers to amplify emotion and a map to navigate when the path is foggy. Talent may start the journey, but persistence finishes it. Songs that endure are rarely stumbled upon fully formed; they are earned, word by word, chord by chord, through the steady, unglamorous labor of making.