The Sunday Songwriter: 10 Rules for Creative Songwriting From a Nun in L.A.

In this edition of The Sunday Songwriter:

• A famed artist and nun shares her 10 rules for creative productivity
• The Poetry Foundation doesn’t realize they’re giving away 76 free song ideas
• The Beatles demonstrate that a lyric can be just five words long
• This emotional “color wheel” can help you select the right mood for your song

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10 Rules on Creativity From Sister Corita Kent
In 1968, celebrated artist Sister Corita Kent wrote “Ten Rules For Students and Teachers” as part of a class she taught for Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles. Later that year, she left her convent and moved to Boston — but in Corita’s wake, this list became the official rules for the entire Art Department of her former convent’s college. Sister Corita’s friend, composer John Cage, spread the word about this list. “Ten Rules” encourages us to work hard, to see every creative effort as an experiment, and to be patient with the process. This two-minute read has now helped guide the work of budding artists, composers, and dance companies — and now, I hope, songwriters like us.

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76 Song Ideas From the Poetry Foundation
On the Poetry Foundation’s website, they’ve sorted thousands of poems into categories — you’ll find those categories in the sidebar to the left on their page. The categories were intended to help the reader browse poems by subject, but I suggest another use: use the list of poem subjects at the Poetry Foundation to brainstorm new works of your own. Click “Love”, for example, and a list of more specific types of love poem unfolds: Desire; Heartache & Loss; Realistic & Complicated; Romantic Love; Classic Love; Infatuation & Crushes; Unrequited Love; Break-Ups and Vexed Love; and First Love. These lists are so useful that I’m taking time out this afternoon to copy the entire list down into my own little homemade Songwriter’s Pocket Reference (pictured at the top of this post).

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Ticket 23: Use Fewer Words
Matt Blick of the blog Beatles Songwriting Academy has counted the number of unique words in lyrics by the Beatles and by others. The conclusion? It’s possible to stretch just five words to fill an entire song. Lyrics, after all, tend to be quite short — sometimes even shorter than haiku, cinquains, and other miniature poetic forms. Matt’s observation here reminds us that one of our greatest challenges as lyricists is to do more with less.

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Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions
Along with a song’s general topic or theme (see the Poetry Foundation link above), attitude is one of the most essential ingredients of a song. What emotional tone does your song take toward its subject? At the source of this link, author Jessica Hagy plays at creating a kind of emotional color wheel. Anticipation and surprise; admiration and loathing; love and remorse — all your favorite moods are represented. In the Poetry Foundation link above, you’ll find 76 possible song subjects. Once you’ve picked one, choose an emotion from Jessica’s mood wheels. Now you’ve got a song topic and you’ve got an attitude to take toward that topic. What can you make out of those?