Most people who "write music" have forty half-songs and nothing finished. The problem usually isn't talent — it's that they've never practised finishing, which is its own separate skill.
The two-hour rule
Pick a night. Two hours, one song, start to end. It will be bad. That's not a risk of the exercise, it's the point of it: you're training the muscle that gets to the last bar, not the one that polishes the first.
The shape
- 0:00–0:20 — two chords and a tempo. No deliberating; the first thing that doesn't annoy you wins.
- 0:20–0:50 — hum melodies over the loop until one repeats itself back at you. That's the hook.
- 0:50–1:30 — words. One true thing, said plainly. Placeholder lyrics count.
- 1:30–2:00 — arrange something with a beginning and an end. Bounce it. Done.
Then leave it alone
Don't fix it tonight. Listen next week and you'll hear exactly two things worth keeping — and knowing which two is the taste you were worried you didn't have.
Do this four times and something surprising happens: the fourth one isn't bad.