Yarnton Songwriting Workshop

May 30, 2025

SCHEDULE:

SECTION A

2:00pm | Introductions & Schedule for the Day (Morning Room)

2:30pm | Sandra McCracken: Creativity

2:50pm | Q&A with Sandra McCracken, David Clifton, & Taylor Leonhardt

3:30pm | Instructions for groups and writing prompts

3:30 - 3:45pm | Break

SECTION B

3:45pm - 4:30pm | Songwriting in groups or solo (we suggest finding places outside around Yarnton Manor)

4:45pm | Gather for feedback (Morning Room)

5:00pm | Closing

SONGWRITING PROMPTS:

PROMPT 1:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.”

—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets. Originally published 1943.

PROMPT 2:

If your life had a theme song, what phrase or theme has been on repeat for you in these past few months? There could be more than one, but pick the first one that comes to mind. It could be a pop song or a ‘hook’ or just an idea (or even a question) that’s been on your mind. Can you make a chorus or stanza from this phrase?

PROMPT 3:

It didn't behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
This was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn't stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn't
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me.

Hurricane from A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver

PROMPT 4:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The Peace Of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

HOW TO WRITE A SONG:

1.⁠ ⁠Free write for a page, no filter. Step back and see if a phrase stands out.

2. Put a few simple words in lines or a stanza, with a rhythm in your head

“Come thou fount…”
“Dear refuge of my weary soul…”

3.⁠ ⁠Repeat the phrase and try out a melody to see if the words sing well? Is it fun to sing? Is it meaningful to you?

4.⁠ ⁠Develop the lines and music and repeat them. If you play an instrument or have a piano, plot out or play the notes and repeat while trying variations until the lyric and music fits.

5.⁠ ⁠Share your song idea with a trusted friend or two. And not every idea is a good idea and that’s ok! More ideas generate better ideas.