Intro

I’ve always been inspired by my dear friend, Sarah Gulish, to take on the “Song A Day Challenges” over the last couple of years.  I only just began my songwriting journey three years ago and prior to 2023 starting, I had only written a total of forty-six songs.  This January, I decided that I was going to actually complete the challenge and here I am in February of 2023 able to tell you that in one month, I wrote thirty-one songs!  They’re not all my favorite, a lot of them are really silly, but they exist and they came out of my brain, so that’s a win. 

Perfectionism

The hardest part for me every time I tried this challenge was starting.  I learned how much I let my own perfectionism get in the way of my creations on a daily basis in all aspects of my life. I learned that I can’t let perfectionism get in the way or I won’t do it.  Usually I tell myself, “Ok, you need to sit down and craft a beautiful, meaningful, clever, musical, masterpiece of a song.”  And then… big surprise… I don’t write a song!  So for this challenge, I would set myself a timer and I had to have a song by the end of that time.  This left no room for overthinking or judgment in my creation process.  Now I magically have all of these songs that didn’t exist before when I was letting perfectionism guide my creativity or rather, block my creativity. 

Finding The Time

Time is at a premium! How can we find the time to write a song a day?! I was able to carve out little slices of time in between activities and use a tiny nugget of inspiration to build a song upon.  I had to constantly battle myself and not overthink the process.  Instead of deciding whether or not I thought my ideas were “good,” I just kept writing until it was done.  It didn’t matter if I thought it was good or not, it mattered that I wrote a song.   Slowly but surely, over the course of the month, I felt myself improving on the process! I gave myself permission to just write the song with the goal of finishing.  If I had the time to finesse the song, or I was really enjoying myself, then I’d put in the extra time but that wasn’t required.  

Community

Doing this challenge actually helped me connect with family, friends, and colleagues as well as current and former students. I had one former student take part in the challenge that had only written a few songs before.  She really stepped out of her comfort zone and wrote all kinds of songs in January that helped her process things happening in her life and helped me get to know her better.  

I am one of those crazy people that no longer uses social media. I have to tell you, it has brought great joy to my life but it does make sharing my songs  more challenging.  However, I would individually send songs to family, friends, former professors, and I built a following over the month as well as stronger connections with those people rather than just getting likes on social media.  Are there perks to social media that I’m missing out on? Of course! But I have been really enjoying the benefits of more personal and meaningful connections.  It was so exciting to receive personalized feedback from people from all different walks of my life.  Another person that I was able to have special connections with through this process was my husband.  He joined me on a few of the songs and he was so kind to listen to every song I wrote throughout the month.  Less scrolling, more songwriting.  

Benefits

One benefit that I didn’t expect from this challenge was how much it refined my songwriting process. Sometimes I wrote all of the lyrics without touching an instrument.  Often a melody would appear in my brain as I wrote the lyrics, or a melody would appear as I started playing chord progressions on an instrument.  Sometimes I’d start with a  chord progression and just force myself to create the whole song over that one chord progression.  Other songs, I purposely wrote without any rhyme scheme, and when I sang them, I didn’t even care that it was without a rhyme scheme.  I felt like I was being such a rebel in those situations.  I’d also do the opposite and stick to a strict rhyme scheme, and I’d find that the rhyme would help guide the story I was communicating. 

I’d challenge myself by switching up my process.  Some techniques I tried were writing from different points of view, writing a story song, trying new forms I don’t normally use, etc…  If you look at my list of January songs, I have everything from verse/chorus/bridge songs to ABA songs to songs with a refrain, and more.  I tried prompts, free writes, word webs, different instruments, and even noticed my own songwriting habits. Sometimes I’d lean into my songwriting habits and other times, I’d force myself to purposely do the opposite of what I wanted with a melody or chord progression.  This resulted in some of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. 

Musical Time Capsule

This activity became its own little musical journal of reflections.  It helped both pull me out and lean into my January depression/anxiety.  My songs allowed me to process my feelings about Christmas being over, the winter blues, wondering where the snow is hiding, my hatred of cooking, and wonderful things like imagining my dog’s thoughts, being pregnant, my love of pizza and ice cream, reading books, taking a road trip, etc… This challenge helped me celebrate/pay tribute to happenings in my life such as a goodbye song to my car I’ve had for twelve years, a celebration song for my new car, a letter to my new baby, an honoring of the last page of my songwriting notebook, etc…  Some songs helped me acknowledge death in my family and tragedy in my community while other songs were purely for fun.  I put all of the videos of my songs and the lyrics to my song in a google drive folder, and now I can look back at January and see everything I was going through.  Where did I record it? What did I write about? Why am I still in the same sweatshirt three days in a row? What did I sing about? How have I grown? As a person that loves dates and numbers, this proved to be an amazing way to preserve time. 

Learning About Myself

Surprisingly, I learned a lot about myself.  What is a Chelsea song? So many things! I have songwriting tendencies! I learned that I love my verses to end in a V chord before I go into the chorus, I learned that I love the melody of my choruses to jump up to the high “Do” and move down, I love secondary dominants, and I want the V/vi to be in every song I write.   I tried to force myself out of my comfort zone and explore various genres in my writing style.  I also tried to experiment with how I went about writing a song.  I used to think that in order to write a song, I needed to do tons of prep work. (Yes, there is a place and time for this, just not in a song-a-day challenge!)  This challenge showed me that I could start with a tiny spark of an idea and just see where it goes.  I’d write a silly phrase I heard or a little idea that popped into my head and force myself to go with it. 

In Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic,” she writes about how when you’re showing up daily to your craft, you’re opening yourself up to receive ideas that are passing you in the universe.  Had I not been committed to writing on a daily basis, those ideas would pass me by but since I was open to them, ideas came to me.  I actually had the experience of a song just pouring out of me. I used to think that was a myth that people made up!  I was running and decided I wanted to write a song about having a baby. This song was going to be a beautiful tear jerker of a song about becoming a mother. Well, by the end of my run, I had this whole jazzy, comedic, silly song in my head called, “I’m Havin’ A Baby.” It was not the song I set out to write, but it’s the song that decided to arrive and it’s one of my absolute favorites. 

Permission

My biggest lesson was to get out of my own way.  I spent 2022 with a goal to write one song a month, it lasted until July, and after that, it all felt too overwhelming.  I told myself that I needed a big idea, a brilliant chord progression, an interesting melody, a clever concept, and a LOT of time to craft a song.  You know what I would do? Nothing! No songs were written with that mindset because those requirements were too much for me, and I would just shut down.  This challenge didn’t allow for this type of thinking. “Ok, it’s 8 pm. I have 15 minutes.  Ready, set, go!”  Whatever existed after that 15 minutes was my song, and it didn’t matter if it was “good” or “bad.”

I gave myself freedom and permission to write what I thought were “bad” or “silly” songs so that I could just let my thoughts/ideas flow.  These songs turned out to be my favorites! Why don’t I always give myself that permission in everything I do??

Outro

As I said in the beginning, this activity has been helpful in all aspects of my life.  In starting projects I might have thought I couldn’t handle, in utilizing my time, processing emotions, connecting with humans, and so much more. I highly recommend taking up this challenge!  The point is to just do.  It’s easier said than done, I know! I’ve tried this challenge a few times before, and this is my first time ever completing it. When you just force yourself to do the thing, things get created, and things happen!

I feel such a sense of accomplishment looking at my google drive folder and seeing 31 videos and sets of lyrics/chords. I won’t lie, there were days, many days, that I had to dig deep to force myself to show up, but I never regretted showing up for myself.  There were days I skipped, and then I would have the challenge of writing two songs in one day.  I never thought I could do that before!!  If you’d like to see my songwriting journey over the month, here is my google drive folder for January 2023. 

Reach Out To Me

Feel free to email me at [email protected] or comment on this post if you have any questions or would like to connect about songwriting.  This was such a therapeutic and fun activity, and I would love to hear about your songwriting journey as well!