When Songwriting is Your Lifeblood and Career, Who is Supporting You to Creatively Thrive?
Songwriters, take a moment to honour how dedicated you are to your musical and lyrical gifts. Songwriting is your lifeblood, it’s how you express yourself and how you desire to help others in the world, regardless of if you’ve had the level of ‘success’ you want for your songs. You know songwriting is magic; divine creative ideas that you are gifted with to share with the world.
Sometimes what is happening around you can make it hard to write – time, headspace, priorities, distractions, where the next paycheck is coming from, the world shifting so rapidly, feeling enslaved to and unsupported by the music industry, so many changing technologies. Yet, many established writers, even when they’re on the road, even when life gets complicated, even when ‘shit hits the fan’, find that regularly writing songs can be the ladder to climb out the dark spaces and keep the sunshine on their face.
Staying connected to your unique divine gifts, keeping your tools sharpened, and maintaining your creative fitness can be as simple as writing a song every week. When was the last time you wrote songs for you, not for your next album, tour, or publisher, but for you?
How writing songs each week resulted in an ARIA nomination and world tour
Renowned and much-loved Australian singer-songwriter and story weaver, Mama Kin joined I Heart Songwriting Club alongside band-mate Dingo Spender with no intention other than to write regularly.
90% of their album Golden Magnetic, released under the band name Mama Kin Spender, came from their I Heart Songwriting Club 1-hour weekly songwriting exercises. This album was nominated for an ARIA award and has toured all over the world.
Here are the simple steps they took to arrive at those magical songs:
This is a process of accountability
to your productivity and growth as a writer
from a creative perspective not an industry expectation
yet still giving you exactly what you want for your career
“For many years I was a staff writer on Music Row. I loved the experience of collaborating and focusing to write the next “hit song”, however, sometimes it felt slightly at the cost of my artistic integrity. In “I Heart Songwriting Club” I am remembering the initial joy of writing a song for the pure joy of writing a song. I have found excellent feedback, wonderful people, and encouragement to keep going, keep writing, believe in my voice, and that it has something to say. “
“It’s rare to see a program that honors the self-love, intuition, and creative flow so necessary for sustainable creative careers and aligns those parts of the process with community and accountability that keep writers doing their part of the work… I now have an anonymous space to check my ego, let go of any expectations I’d put on myself or perceive from others, and tune in to the part of me that is the most enriched, gratified and inspired when I’m writing songs.“
“Writing with I Heart Songwriting Club has become one of the most important parts of my creative practice. It pushes me to set aside dedicated weekly time to develop my craft, and the feedback and community support makes the process so much less isolating. The personal and career implications for this are huge – I feel like I’m finally beginning to reach my true potential as an artist.“
“I Heart Songwriting Club has been hugely liberating for me… Not only have I been overly-precious with my songwriting (to the point where everything I wrote had to be a reflection of my deepest brilliance!!), but also I was such a perfectionist that it would take me numerous songwriting sessions to complete a song… Basically nothing was getting through my filter. But by writing week after week I have come to a place of being songwriting fit.”
How The Club can help you
I Heart Songwriting Club is a global community of songwriters, but don’t be fooled by our playful name, it’s not a club just for beginners, emerging or young songwriters. We also have a network of established and professional songwriters who attribute their prolific writing, huge song catalogue and even significant career successes to their weekly songwriting practice in the Club. This Club was created by a songwriter for songwriters.
When you join The Club, you’re put into a small online group with other established writers. You can show up anonymously, should you wish to. You simply write a song in 1 hour each week to a given theme that gets you thinking outside the box. After 1 hour, make a no-fuss voice memo recording on your phone and upload it to your group. Each group member then listens to each other’s song and gives supportive and helpful feedback for further development, should you choose to take the song further. You own 100% of the rights to your songs, always.
The main activities of the Club happen asynchronously so you don’t have to be anywhere at any specific time, and that means you might be writing alongside other songwriters in completely different regions to you. Many established writers in our club say that they feel liberated by their I Heart Songwriting Club experience and we’d love to extend the invitation for you to have that too.
Be Inspired
What Songs Should I Record? Best Practices to Recording Your First Album
What Songs Should I Record? Best Practices to Recording Your First Album Based on the content of Episode 25, The Magic of Songwriting with Francesca de Valence In this blog and podcast episode, we answer commonly asked questions emerging
Why Every Songwriter Should Use Social Media
Why Every Songwriter Should Use Social Media Whether you're a seasoned songwriter or just starting out, social media can be a powerful tool for growing your audience and advancing your music career. Despite the negative reputation
Writing A Second Album – How Courage to Take Action Can Result in Confidence and Amazing Songs with Émilie Landry
Writing A Second Album: How Courage to Take Action Can Result in Confidence and Amazing Songs Based on the Podcast Episode: "How Courage to Take Action Can Result in Confidence and Amazing Songs with Émilie Landry" - Episode 24, The Magic of Songwriting
How Relevant and Helpful Feedback on your Songs Can Help You to Grow
How Relevant and Helpful Feedback on your Songs Can Help You to Grow Based on the content of Episode 23, The Magic of Songwriting with Francesca de Valence Receiving feedback on your songs can feel really scary, yet it’s