A friend of mine asked me to write a song for a group that he's working with because they needed material. I accepted the challenge not having written a whole song for anybody before because I figured it would be a good way to branch out further into songwriting. I mean I've written verses for people to spit but never a whole song and being that its for a younger audience makes it more challenging.

The real challenge that I'm having involves simply staying focused on getting it done. I've come up with several song topics but actually writing about them has been difficult. This year has been a very strange year for me. I can't say it's a bad one but it's definitely not one of my most favorable years.

I not a big fan of excuses but it seems as if I've been cheering them on lately with this latest project.

So here is what I am proposing to do and if you think it will help you then by all means join me.

First, I need to seriously look at my "Why" for doing this project. Why am I doing this? Is it for fame and glory? Is it because I like to write? Or maybe its because I see dollar signs and a pot of gold at the end of the writing rainbow. What ever my "Why" is I need to clearly have that in the forefront of my mind if that is my goal and then the second step is to...

WRITE IT DOWN!!!

I heard some stats a while ago that said that people who have clear, specific goals with a deadline are usually more inclined to achieve them. I believe that figure was about a 97% achievement ratio. What's absolutely krazy is that I usually write my goals down but with this project, I slipped. I'm only human.

Once I've got my goal for this project written down and my "Why" for doing it firmly etched in my brain. The next step is to break that main goal into smaller goals or milestones. How else do you eat an elephant but one bite at a time?

Okay, so now I got a reason and some written goals and milestones to look forward to. Here is the next and one of the most critical ingredients:

ACTION!!!

All this planning is cool but nothing happens without action. And while action is great, it helps to have a map of where you're going. That's what all the planning and goal setting was about in the first place. So you begin to take steps toward the first milestone.

For me that involves having at least 2 songs completed before the end of next week that I can submit to the group's manager for review. To do that I must schedule some time out of my busy life to sit with the pen, the pad and some fire beats to write to...let's say about 30 to 45 minutes a day. I can afford to do that even if it means getting up a bit earlier in the morning...without hitting the snooze button.

Okay so here are the steps again:

Figure out your "Why" for writing the song. Why are you writing the song?

1. Write down realistic goals for completing the song?

2. Set milestones to help measure your progress

3. Action, Action, & more Action!!! Nothing beats action.

4. Track you progress to make sure you're on schedule to complete your song.

5. Finish the song.

With these 6 simple steps, anyone who chooses to use them should be able to knock out plenty of songs in a short period of time.

I'll let you know how this works out for me and please keep me posted how it works out for you.