Steps two and three of Jack Hardy's songwriting manifesto.

Step two. Get together with other writers once a week.

Not every other week. Not the first Tuesday of the month. Every week. This gives you a self-imposed deadline and a group of U.N. observers to enforce the deadline.

This group can also include other “kindred spirits.” Our group has included novelists, photographers, poets, painters, playwrights and actors. Make it fun. We always cook up a big pasta, people bring wine, beer or organic fruit juices (or whatever they think will help them enjoy the process).

This is also a mutual support group for this out-of-the-mainstream line of creativity we have collectively chosen to pursue. We cook together, we eat together, we drink together. We chat, socialize and have fun and then, and only then, do we play what we have created that week. If anyone hasn’t created that week they don’t play, however they can still participate.

Step three. True criticism focuses on what is being doe right.

Criticism is a harsh word. It can only come when there is a feeling of trust between the participants and only when the participants are intensely aware of where the artist is coming from and where the artist is attempting to go. If you get together with the same people every week you will develop this sort of intimate creative critical relationship where everyone is equally vulnerable and everyone is fully aware of each other’s capabilities so that one is not comparing one against the others but rather against what they are capable of and their own line of progress. This allows writers of all different levels of maturity to participate at whatever level they are currently at.

We rejoice in each other’s successes, minimize each other’s failures, and suggestions for improvement are specific and coming from a desire to see each other improve and write as well as we possibly can.