We all have our struggles. We have struggles at work, home and basically, anything we do or touch. I remember one struggle I had on learning to play the guitar. Barre chords. A barre chord is where you take your index finger and lay it across all six strings and press down hard. They with your other three fingers you play your chords. My struggle was pressing down hard enough to get a good sound out of my guitar.
Part of my problem was that I was playing an acoustic guitar. It is so much easier to play barre chords on a electric guitar. The strings are easier to push down and they might me closer to the frets. I say might be. This probably depends on how good of a acoustic guitar you own and how low the action is set up on the guitar. I have owned some pretty bad guitars in my life. Guitars where the strings were higher off the fretboard that they should of been. I am sure that this didn't help with the learning curve.
My songwriting struggle is when I go to write a song. I have a hard time turning off the editor. Let me explain who the editor is. Let' say the line I write down is- I like creamer in my coffee. A nice simple line. The editor in me says, I need to fix this line before I write my next thought. So I change it to- I love creamer in my coffee. Oh yeah, that is better but I want more details. I love hazelnut creamer in my coffee. Do I really need the I ? I don't think so. Love hazelnut creamer in my coffee. How about an adjective to describe my coffee? Love hazelnut creamer in my morning coffee. Okay, I like that alot better.
It tales longer to write a song when you let the editor in at the beginning of the process. I wrote a song this week and I was able to get down a couple verses and chorus before he took over. The more work you can get done without the editor getting involved the faster the process can go? Sure, I might throw away one of those verses and not use a single word but I might use one verse and not have to change a thing.
Try to write your songs without editing for first fifteen minutes of your writing session. If you can go longer great. if you can thirty minutes that is even better. The more ideas you get down the better. You will have more material to edit. The more material you have to edit the better your song will be. This keeps you from having to switch back and forth between being creative and being in editor mode.