By Jim Hagarty
A note to struggling writers.
Songwriting icon Hank Williams Sr. once said, “If a song takes longer than 20 minutes to write, it probably wasn’t worth writing.”
Being cynical and no lover of country music, you might reply, “I’m surprised it took him 20 minutes to write some of those songs.”
But Hank Williams was a genius. Other songwriters revere him. Leonard Cohen, in his own classic, Tower of Song, wrote: “I hear Hank Williams coughin’, all night long. A hundred floors above me in the tower of song.”
Cohen wasn’t commenting on Williams’ coughing. And he wasn’t being cute or overly humble. In an interview about the song, he gave credit to the writer of Your Cheatin’ Heart and dozens of other classics as being at the top of the songwriting food chain. A hundred floors above Cohen himself, in fact, a writer of some celebrated note.
I just now tried to write a story. I struggled with it. So I quit.
If it doesn’t come easy, maybe it wasn’t meant to be.
“Probably wasn’t worth writing.”
