Back in January 2012, with Pat Pattison's permission, I put together a web-forum for a small number of local friends and me to work through Pat's then newly-released book, "Songwriting Without Boundaries".

The book contains 56 days of exercises that are designed to help lyricists: (a) enhance their lyric writing; (b) find their unique lyric voice.

All up there are four challenges and each one takes 14 days to work through. These challenges are...

• Challenge 1 (days 1 - 14): Object writing practice from the perspectives of WHAT, WHO, WHERE and WHEN
• Challenge 2 (days 15 - 28): Creating metaphors from semantic collisions between adjectives, nouns and verbs
• Challenge 3 (days 29 - 42): Developing more advanced word skills with metaphors and extended metaphors
• Challenge 4 (days 43 - 56): Writing in rhythm and rhyme

The website from 5 years ago still exists and in around a week's time, I'm going to begin once more working through these tasks of Pat's. Even though they require significant commitment, I know from experience that the gain from doing them is substantial.

It's not necessary to own Pat's book to be involved. While having it will definitely help, the web site does contain sufficient instructional information.

So.... If you are interested in joining the journey, please send me a private message and I'll forward the necessary information.

All the best,
Noel

Noel,

This is a great offer. I nearly signed up, but then I remembered my promise to myself to actually get an album released and I'm about 75% through with the effort, so I have to stay focused - but I am very tempted.

-Scott

Noel, that looks to be a FANTASTIC offer! Like Scott I am tempted but I REALLY need to stay focused on what I all have going on...and it's a bit much already. I just don't feel I could be as accountable to it as I would need to be.

Don't TOTALLY count me out yet. I am going to look and see if it's at all possible...basically, what I would have to give up to do it. My instinct says I can't, but I want to KNOW either way.

Great share!

Hi Scott,

Thanks for being interested. I know you're a Pattison fan. I'll definitely be running through it again in the future. I'll keep you in mind.

In the meantime, you might be interested in a small book by Andrea Stolpe (if you don't have it already). Andrea is a past student of Pat's who now lectures at Berklee. She devised a way to take Pat's concept of object writing and to use it to create lyrics. It's an incredibly productive approach. I use it regularly. Her book is concise (around 150 pages) and well written.

The text is called 10 Steps To Effective Storytelling (link) and it's well worth having on the shelf. Without exception, it is my first 'go-to' book and I regularly re-read it to keep the ideas fresh in my mind.

I have also put together a 6 week program that works through Andrea's book. I wouldn't mind doing that some time in the near future, either.

As mentioned, I'll keep you in mind.

Regards,
Noel

Caaron,

I appreciate your interest. Thanks for that. It's definitely better to work through Pat's book as a small group. I've found that it makes the process more enjoyable.

If it's any help, you'd be able to get through the exercises if you could find 30 minutes for (say) 5 days a week.

Even though Pat suggests running through each set of 14 days consecutively, I found that, for me, it's much more productive to work on a 5-day week... like a work week. This means that if the unexpected happens, which it inevitably does, I have two days to catch up and get on top of the process.

For this reason, I'll be approaching a set of exercises over three weeks. The following plan is one that I will most likely adopt. If I can get more done in a week, great, but if not then below is what I'll aim for. (I've used Challenge 1 as an example.)


I'll then probably have the next few days off and start Challenge 2 on the upcoming Monday.

The exercises are entirely self-paced so the design of how to do them is up to the individual. Also, if you miss out doing an exercise here and there, it's OK. This is especially true of Challenge 1 (which is probably the most intense of the challenges).

Hope these extra thoughts help.

Regards,
Noel