Struggling to finish your songs? Can't get past the roadblocks halting your creativity?
Then it's time to pay songwriting fairy godmother Francesca de Valence a visit when she's at Turn Up Music Conference on the Sunshine Coast.
“This year I'll be running a workshop that is really about helping singer-songwriters get past their biggest hurdles and barriers, and actually have finished songs that will shape their career, because without finished songs you have no career. This is the starting point,” Francesca says.
Francesca is the creator of and driving force behind I Heart Songwriting Club, a global community platform for songwriters that has helped write over 7,000 songs since it began. What Francesca specialises in is breaking musicians out of their writer's block and teaching them to get out of their own way when it comes to making music.
“I'm really enlightened, I think is the word, to see these people using the same tool I built for myself to get results for themselves and see how much happier they are, to see how much more connected they are, to see them getting results for their career and for themselves personally,” she says.
In her time running I Heart Songwriting Club and workshops, Francesca has identified the most common reason that stops people from finishing what they start. “So many songwriters attend all these workshops, read all these books, try and get the latest this, that and the other, but those people – they're not writing songs,” she says.
“They're the songwriters who say 'yeah but I've got all of this going on, my job is demanding, I don't have time, my kids need me', but they've got time to read a book and they've got time to go to a workshop.
“What it is, is fear – fear of sucking that is stopping them from writing. It is fear of their own judgement that is stopping them from writing, and as soon as they start dealing with that they can quickly get on with writing songs. Publish or perish is so prevalent in this age for any creativity.”
What Francesca offers is a system for songwriting that works, and not just for herself but for the legions of I Heart Songwriting Club members that have enjoyed its success.
For anyone thinking 'that's all good and well for a professional songwriter, but it won't work for me', Francesca herself is proof the system works. Though she has currently written over 250 songs, it wasn't all that long ago she was facing the same hurdles she's now helping countless others to overcome.
“I was using all of the excuses in the book, I was a terrible practicing songwriter, I struggled to write four songs a year,” she admits.
“So how I've done it is writing one song every single week in an hour, with a community around me, with a guideline and a theme – so the very problem of where to start is solved for you – and with zero attachment to the outcome. That's how I solved the problem and that's how over 500 people have solved their problem. There's nothing like it in the world.”
