You can't force song writing creativity.
Yes you can. People who write jingles, soundtracks, TV and movie music and who are on a deadline do exactly that. Whether you want to call it forcing creativity or whether you want to call it "the necessary discipline required to get a job done to order" makes little difference.
The Brill building songwriters writing hits to order in the late 50s/early 60s, the Motown experience in the early, mid and late 60s, Andrew Loog Oldham delivering the ultimatum to Jagger and Richards to "write songs" as they couldn't cover blues stuff all their lives, Lennon and McCartney getting together for the specific purpose of writing songs {and coming up with them}, George Harrison writing "Don't bother me" as an excercize to see whether he could write a song, the guys from Genesis and other groups like Yes getting together specifically to write songs......the examples are too numerous to mention. One is not always in the mood to be creative. One is not always 'inspired' to write. In those instances, that's when the craft of songwriting kicks in. Some would call it forced creativity. Good luck with that because whether the song is forced, whether it came in a dream, whether it was inspired by particular events, the end result is the same. We can't really tell how particular songs came into being.
A couple of interesting historical notes. When the Beatles came to record "Rubber soul" in the October of 1965, they were tired from and of touring, they had a tight deadline to meet {the record had to be released in time for the christmas market}......and they had no real songs. In the space of less than one month they came up with and recorded 16 songs and later, admitted that "Day tripper" had been 'forced'. In his book "The Beatles' recording sessions" Mark Lewisohn says "For the first time, John and Paul had to force themselves to come up with material". "Rubber soul" turned out to be
the turning point album in not only British rock, but rock in general. Artists really started conceiving of albums differently after that.
A year or so later, The Who were about to go into the studio to record and Pete Townshend asked John Entwistle if he'd gotten round to writing some songs yet. He was always trying to encourage the others to write but they wouldn't. So to shut him up, Entwistle said he'd written one, thinking that would be the end of the matter but Townshend asked him what it was called. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind, "oh, it's called 'Boris the spider' ". So he had to go home that night and write a song called "Boris the spider". He did so. It's a fantastic, groundbreaking piece of music. Apparently it was his first song and took him a few minutes.
A few years later after most of the writing and recording had been done on "Tommy", Nik Cohn the journalist was telling Pete Townshend that he wasn't going to give it a great review as it was a bit inaccessible. Townshend, knowing Cohn loved pinball, asked if there was a song about pinball, would that make him happy and Cohn said yeah. So he went and wrote "Pinball wizard" and gave it central part in his story, this deaf, dumb and blind kid being a masterful pinball player.
Free's "Alright now" came about from the specific desire to write something anthemic that their crowds could chant like football crowds did.
David Bowie was being deliberately topical in "Space oddity" as the moon landings were coming up. Tony Visconti refused to produce it because he felt it was a forced blatant cash in which is why Gus Dudgeon ended up producing.
In the 80s when recording the "October" LP, Bono had to improvise lyrics to many of the songs because the original lyrics had been in a bag that got nicked.
The history of music is packed with examples of 'forced creativity'. Lots of writers have little trouble with it !
I think it's a hard process to describe
That's for sure. I think of it as easy to discuss endlessly but impossible to describe.
I think it's easiest when you don't try to force it or go to the piano or guitar thinking "I'm gonna write a song today."
It may well be easier but you most certainly can go to the piano or guitar and say "I'm going to write a song today". Presuming of course, that you can noodle about on the guitar or piano !
There seems to be this misconception that writing in a disciplined way isn't fun. I beg to differ ~ voraciously. For some people getting up in the morning or afternoon with a blank sheet and no ideas and going through the process of creating a song is the greatest fun one can have. By the same token, it is by no means a 'given' that the songs that seem to write themselves or are 'inspired' are automatically going to be fun, either.
because making songs is a truly magical process and there's no real formula or button to press
This, however, I believe almost wholeheartedly. Though there
are formulas, whichever way you approach it, it's certainly a mysterious process. That which is mysterious can be made common through repetition, but that doesn't take away it's mysterious qualities.
