What We Can Learn from Taylor Swift’s Writing Process
I’m a Swifty.
I don’t think I’ve ever said it here before, but it’s true: I love Taylor Swift. Unapologetically. As an artist, a businesswoman, a role model for young women, and a very awkward dancer (proving she is, after all, only human).
Given all of that, I’m very pleased to spend this weekend listening to Midnights with a candle burning, the pets in my lap, and the house to myself. (My husband says the fact that I’m insufferable when she drops a new album had nothing to do with the timing of his guys’ weekend out of town, but I’m not sure I believe him.)
And as I listen, I’m reflecting on the acceptance speech Swift gave last month when she received the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade award at the Nashville Songwriter Awards. There was so much to love in her acceptance speech, so I wanted to share the biggest lessons and reminders I’m taking away from it—and that I hope will inspire you, too.
1. Artists Make Magic
Here’s how Swift described artists in the first few moments of her speech:
…a bunch of people who just love making stuff. Who love the craft. Who live for that rare, pure moment when a magical cloud floats down right in front of you in the form of an idea for a song, and all you have to do is grab it. Then shape it like clay. Prune it like a garden. And then wish on every lucky star or pray to whatever power you believe in that it might find its way out into the world and make someone feel seen, feel understood, feel joined in their grief or heartbreak or joy for just a moment.
Yes, she was specifically talking about songwriters, but don’t you feel this way as an author, too? That cloud of an idea is the first spark, but the real magic is in what you do with it—and what it has the potential to do for others once you put it out into the world.
We all have moments where we wonder what the point is. Where we wonder if we ought to give up. And we all have those inspiring quotes and stories that remind us why we do what we do. I’m adding this one to my list.
2. Writing and Life Are One and the Same
…the way I see it, this is an award that celebrates a culmination of moments. Challenges. Gauntlets laid down. Albums I’m proud of. Triumphs. Strokes of luck or misfortune. Loud, embarrassing errors and the subsequent recovery from those mistakes, and the lessons learned from all of it. This award celebrates my family and my co-writers and my team. My friends and my fiercest fans and my harshest detractors and everyone who entered my life or left it. Because when it comes to my songwriting and my life, they are one and the same. As the great Nora Ephron once said, “Everything is copy.”
It's no secret that Swift mines many of her songs from real life—you hardly have to be a true Swifty to know that bit of trivia all too well—and I love that she acknowledged that here. But what I love even more is that while, when many of us (myself included) try to use our lives to inform our writing, we wind up with something that feels more like a middle school notebook than a novel. And while Swift certainly has those songs (and I will dance awkwardly to them every time), she’s also mastered the art of using her life to inform rich, fantastical worlds and stories that transport listeners somewhere totally new. “Last Great American Dynasty,” for example, is a song inspired by Rhode Island house and her time there, but she’s made it into something so much bigger. And “Marjorie” is a tribute to her grandmother that catapults listeners back to their own childhoods.
I have my opinions about the common advice to “write what you know” (in short, that it’s used in a limiting way), and I love that Swift shows us how to turn that advice on its head—using what we know to write something even bigger.
3. Use Every Tool at Your Desk
I have, in my mind, secretly, established genres categories for lyrics I write. Three of them, to be exact. They are affectionately titled quill lyrics, fountain pen lyrics, and glitter gel pen lyrics. I came up with these categories based on what writing tool I imagine having in my hand when I scribbled it down, figuratively.
If anybody knows how to play with style and tone—and isn’t scared of doing it—it’s Swift, and her writing tool analogy is a perfect one for authors to keep in mind as we approach new projects, new scenes, and even sometimes new sentences. Here’s a short run-down, in Swift’s own words:
Quill Lyrics: “I categorize certain songs of mine in the ‘Quill’ style if the words and phrasings are antiquated, if I was inspired to write it after reading Charlotte Brontë or after watching a movie where everyone is wearing poet shirts and corsets. If my lyrics sound like a letter written by Emily Dickinson’s great grandmother while sewing a lace curtain, that’s me writing in the Quill genre.”
Fountain Pen Lyrics: “Fountain pen style means a modern storyline or references, with a poetic twist. Taking a common phrase and flipping its meaning. Trying to paint a vivid picture of a situation, down to the chipped paint on the door frame and the incense dust on the vinyl shelf. Placing yourself and whoever is listening right there in the room where it all happened.”
Glitter Gel Pen Lyrics: “Frivolous, carefree, bouncy, syncopated perfectly to the beat. Glitter Gel Pen lyrics don’t care if you don’t take them seriously because they don’t take themselves seriously.”
What kind of energy are you looking to bring to the page? What kind of pacing? What kinds of emotions? And what tool do you imagine best getting you there? Just like listening to different music can affect our writing energy, so can visualizing the different instruments with which you might apply your story to the page.
(Sometimes, literally using different tools can really help put you in different mindsets and moods, and there’s really nothing in the world that beats a fun new pen. Take it from somebody who, by choice, spent more of her childhood at Office Depot than at Toys R Us.)
4. Let Yourself Have Fun
Glitter Gel Pen lyrics are the drunk girl at the party who tells you that you look like an Angel in the bathroom. It’s what we need every once in a while in these fraught times in which we live.
As Swift’s glitter gel pen lyric classification reminds us, this is supposed to be fun. There’s a lot to take seriously in life, and whether you’re twenty-two or not, feeling happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time is exhausting. It’s important to allow levity and fun into our writing lives. If we’re always wielding the quill or the fountain pen, we’ll burn out.
So take your writing seriously. Take your craft seriously. Show up whenever and however you’re able. But if you can avoid it at all, don’t take yourself so seriously that one missed writing session, one rejection letter, one tough-to-write scene shakes your foundation. When you start to feel that happening, get out your glitter gel pens and a Lisa Frank notebook, and reintroduce yourself to the fun of writing.
Which artists’ writing processes have informed yours? Do you take inspiration from other artistic mediums? What is your favorite track from Midnights, and when do you think we’re getting 1989 (Taylor’s Version)? Let me know in the comments below, or drop me an email to share your thoughts on writing and/or T-Swift. I’d love to connect!