Writer’s block is fairly common, especially among beginners who wants to try it.  There are as many different sources of inspiration for writing a great song as there are snowflakes or fingerprints.  All it takes is a little practice and those creative juices will be flowing once again.

Here are some ways:

Watch TV.  Is global warming burning you up?  Or maybe human trafficking is giving you road rage?  John Lennon is best known for “Imagine,” which was in itself a protest against the Vietnam War. Whatever the idea, some of the best songwriting, like that of Bob Dylan and newer bands like Rage Against the Machine, is politically charged. 

Read your old diaries.  Love, and all the positive and negative aspects of it, are a good place to start.  Just thinking back among your past relationships can give you a year’s worth of material.

Look at your life.  Just take a look around at your present circumstances.  “I’ve Seen Better Days” is a song that parodies the singer’s daily life.  The music isn’t memorable, but the lyrics ring true to many people of that age group.

Music first, lyrics later.  Another method taken from the hip hop world is to come up with the music before writing the lyrics.  Many develop their beats, or the track that will loop under the rhymes, before writing a single word.  They then freestyle without having anything written down to develop the lyrics.

Freewrite.  Grab a pen and paper, and spend 10 minutes writing whatever comes to mind.  Don’t worry about spelling and grammar or if it makes sense, just keep writing.  After your 10 minutes are up, look it over and see if you have some ideas you can expand upon to make a song out of.