Song Writers: What motivates and inspires you?

Imitation is perhaps a major inspiration. I may try to imitate somebody but I know I cannot fully do what they did because of several factors which are innumerable. And that is what allows me to write new tunes or songs.

Most of my inspiration came from Movies I've watched (some scene or sound of music) and I usually start with melody and chord progression before lyrics.

I think I stumbled across an answer to this just a few hours ago, actually. Obviously, this answer is specific to me, and may or may not change in the future, but... I think the reason I have musical impulses (even though I've never really been a songwriter, as such) is because there's an emotion inside of me that most encapsulates who I am, and this emotion has, to the best of my knowledge, never been fully expressed in music (or writing for that matter, hence being a musician and writer). So yeah... It's an internal desire to express something that I have never had the pleasure of seeing outside of myself, and music (and writing) seem to be the best candidates for how to do that.

Ack, that sounds kind of pretentious... I guess another way of saying it is that I think everybody is an individual on the inside, regardless of their external circumstances, and that for me, at this point, expressing that causes me to want to write and/or make music.

I am a novelist, but I have written multiple songs. I play piano, bass, and I have dabbled in the guitar, so I use to spend quite a bit of time writing songs to sing along to the pattern of notes I would usually play. I have never really wrote anything good, and I definitely can't sing, but I can definitely answer these questions. After all I need 50 posts to be able to post a piece of my novel to be reviewed. haha, so first of, what inspires the songs I write? Basically the same things that inspire me to write anything, my experiences with life, love, and all the down falls that come with both those things. Second, what compels me? I would say the need to create something with soul and meaning, and nothing better portrays that other than a song. Why do I do it? The same reason I do anything in my life, for the experiences and entertainment.

I am a lyrics first kind of guy. I am usually inspired by things I see that are out of whack in some way. I have written a couple of political songs, rants really. I wrote one called "Door Knockers" after a visit by JW's. I wrote one about hating my boss after a bad week. I wrote one about the happiness provided by a good cooler after a weekend on the boat. I even wrote a rise to fame rock star novel and included many of my lyrics in it.