Practice your mistakes. This is an Eric Clapton quote, and I think it’s good advice, not only for musicians, but for songwriters as well.
In other words, listen to your unconscious.
I’ve talked about inspiration before, and there’s a parallel here. The mistake is the closest thing to originality you’re going to get. It’s my bread and butter. In fact, I’m famous for “creative misunderstanding”. My wife will tell you that I’m just not a good listener. Tomato tomahto.
“Chew on a hayseed” is what Pete Selbo said, camping once. I heard “two on a hayseed”. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense. But it created a rather strange mental image, one which I had no business having. A trivial case, but the one that popped up.
Ah, speak of popping up…and inspiration. All of these things are spontaneous “others”. The wrong note your finger played, the misspeak, the misunderstanding. They are original, in that they did not arise from just what’s around you. Your mind conjured it. I like to think of it as a mutation, that strange accident that drives the slow but magnificent process of evolution. It’s a little like the monkeys typing Shakespeare. Yes, you’re the monkey.
The conscious mind steps in, recognizes the mistake for an epiphany, and weaves it into the fabric of a song.
Like Arlo Guthrie said, they are flying by through the air, you just have to be ready to catch them. Which is showing up.
I write every day, for the most part. Or I make myself available to write. Sometimes nothing comes. On those days–most days–I might spend two hours working on a song, and accomplishing nothing. After scribbling, erasing, and more scribbling, the song is as lousy as I found it–or perhaps even worse off.
I don’t consider this time wasted, however (though it certainly feels that way at the time). I’m writing through the shit. Waiting for the right inspiration, the right word, phrase, or melody that’s going to set me off and running. To reuse the puzzle metaphor, sometimes we struggle to find even one piece that fits, but in the end, if we just keep adding one small piece at a time, suddenly, in a flurry of activity, it all comes together. Suddenly it all makes sense, and the pieces fly almost on their own into the picture. Songwriting can be like that.