One of my New Year’s Resolutions this year was that I would sign on for February Album-Writing Month (FAWM). It’s a process in which songwriters take the shortest month of the year and try to write enough songs to fill an album. I have a lot of friends who write fiction and participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which I think is in November, and they’ve generally had a productive experience with it. I’ve wanted to do the songwriting version, but in the few years I’ve been aware of it, February has been the busiest month of my entire year, and trying to fit an album’s worth of songwriting into it was a non-starter. But this year is different. I’m not running the annual conference for my day-job professional organization, and the conference isn’t even taking place in February. Instead of teaching two courses this semester, I’m only teaching one (for the first time ever). I’m not running a national job search. If there were ever a time to do it, this year would be it. February even has an extra day this year! The bigger question is why even think of doing it? For me, that’s an easy answer. I appreciate challenges and I’m good at rising to them – challenging myself to do something, giving myself an assignment, is a good way of focusing on it, and actually getting it done. When I write books (non-fiction) I usually give myself a daily writing quota, and having that quota helps me focus and prioritize – I have to arrange my day to make sure I get it done, and the more you write, the more you have written (and the more you have written, the less the amount that remains to be written seems intimidating). Songwriting is the writing I most want to be doing, but it’s hard to carve out the space to do it in the middle of the rest of my life (not only my day job, but the rest of my music career – booking, publicizing, playing shows). Having a month where I focus on songwriting and hold myself to a challenge, is a way to do that. So yesterday I went to the official FAWM website where you can read up on the challenge and officially declare your intention to participate. And I got scared. In my mind I’d characterized it as “write enough songs for an album,” which, these days, is about 10 (although my first two each have 13). But FAWM officially defines success at the challenge as writing 14 songs in the month . . . and this year, because of the extra day, they’ve declared that success is actually 14 and a half songs. Now, of course, I don’t have to do the official process, or take the organization’s definition of success . . . I don’t even need to succeed (the website points out that many people who fail to write enough songs still are happy to have written a lot of songs). But the thing for me is that if I sign on for a challenge I want to do it for real. If I ever run the Boston marathon (something I probably will do some day) I want to run it officially, with a number, not run the course alongside the registered runners. If I make a resolution to play music every day, I play music every day, even if I have to haul a guitar to Costa Rica. In some ways it’s precisely taking on the full tasks that creates the significance. I can’t fully explain it, but if I take on this challenge, I want to take it on for real, in its existing parameters. But I also realized that it’s not the idea of 14.5 songs – 13 or 10 seem pretty daunting too. My February may be clearer than it’s been in years, but it’s far from clear. In addition to teaching a completely new course and mentoring several new faculty members who are teaching for the first time (and directing the program I’m in), I’m revising the book manuscript finished last summer – that also has to be done by the end of February. And a whole host of other things (many of them music-biz related). An average of a song every two (or three, or four) days is a scary proposition. It’s also a scary proposition because I’m not a fast writer. I spend a lot of time getting songs right, thinking, editing, even researching (as in Crawfordsville). Even when I’m writing regularly, the idea of a song every three or four weeks seems fast; one every other day is unimaginable. And the bigger issue is whether songs I write that quickly will be worthwhile. Sure, I can revise them after the month is over, or finish bits that don’t get finished, but if there isn’t a core of quality there, will it be worthwhile? I was thinking about this issue last night at the We’re About 9 concert; Brian Gundersdorf is one of my all-time favorite songwriters. He’s not a fast writer and his songs show it – every word is the perfect one and a song is a work of art. Is it worthwhile to write songs quickly? On the other hand, I know myself well enough to know that this kind of analysis is a defense mechanism. I’m scared to do it precisely because it’s easier not to – it’s easier to take my life as it comes and not prioritize writing. I don’t have to worry about whether I’m any good at songwriting if I don’t write; I don’t have to worry about whether I’m up to the challenge if I fail to take it on. But I’m happier when I’m writing – and I write better, and write more, when I’m writing regularly. The whole point of FAWM is that it’s hard. It requires you to get out of your daily habits and making songwriting the focus of the month. So while I’m terrified, and I haven’t taken the plunge to sign up yet, that’s precisely why I should.