Be a little silly—reward yourself at this point. Once you have already come up with a few simple jams, lyrics or melodies, give yourself a break and a treat. This works with other animals learning a new trick—it will work for you, too. Play a favorite tune for a few minutes, make a quick phone call to a friend, or have a tiny special snack. I keep a bowl of a favorite snack around and take a few bites after each song and part I’ve come up with. Silly, but you brain likes this, and it does give you something to look forward to after each step. Try to avoid things that have chemical stimulation as a part of them, though—don’t have a caffeineated drink or something alcoholic—whatever you are feeling will only be intensified by this, and you want to learn to like it, not hate it more. Food is best, and only take a little—eating an entire box of doughnuts will probably make you sick, and your brain will associate the illness with this situation and make you want to avoid it in the future—not what we want to do, here. Think mini candy bars (or a small slice of a candy bar) or doughnut holes or a small cookie or a chunk of favorite cheese—you can finish the whole song without getting a tummy ache this way, and won’t have to stress about putting on a few pounds for your efforts. I sometimes even do a mini-workout as a break—a few jumping jacks or stretches—whatever is fun for you—emphasis on the fun.
WRITE THE SONG, NOW
Okay, so now you are more in the mood, you are giggling a little at how silly this all is, and you’ve rewarded yourself for going along with this nonsense so far. It’s now time to take another small step and just throw yourself into the character needed here and “just do it!” Free association is often the best thing to do, here—just jam out whatever comes to mind with the recorder humming along. Feel free to be really ridiculous, now—be as extreme as you want and even do a lyric on how much you don’t like this genre and why. I’ve done really well with parody metal, parody rap and parody country tunes I did this way (the really hilarious part was that I was told that each was a good example of each genre, apart from being parody tunes, so something rubbed off). You can always go back and change things later, and work them into more salable material, but you need to get some initial things on paper, first.
