If you’re one of many disciplined writers who keeps to a daily schedule, great, hold to it. But if you find yourself hitting a wall, rather than trying to muscle through for schedule’s sake, forget it, go do the laundry. Now you may ask, why the laundry? It kind of smells bad. Can I do my bills instead? The answer is no. Your bills will make you think too much. Never underestimate the head-cleansing power of performing mundane, household tasks such as doing the wash.

In this post, I thought I’d touch on the subject of performance rights organizations (PROs), what they do and why they’re important to us as songwriters. (I realize this topic might be a bit old hat for the seasoned songwriters among, us but stick around, fogies; there’s something for you at post’s end.)

As songwriters, we settle into our own individual writing processes. Sitting at that piano late at night. Strumming that guitar, TV on mute and so on -- every process as unique and personal as the musical results they yield. Yet the one thing these exercises hold in common is they all usually center around the use of an instrument. What if, just to change things up, we took that instrument out of the equation?