# Object writing Pat Pattison recommends object writing as an exercise for lyricists. Pick an object and focus your senses on it. Use all seven of your senses: sight, smell, touch, sound, taste, organic (your awareness of your bodily functions), and kinesthetic (your body's relationship to the world around you, e.g. the feeling of being on a train, watching your surroundings zip by). Don't worry about complete sentences.[^1] This is not journaling, which is concerned more with how you feel.[^2] Object writing makes a good first step to songwriting by whipping up lots of "unique sense experiences" you may have related to your song idea.[^3] Pat suggests writing first thing in the morning everyday for only ten minutes each day. This helps put you in a writer's frame of mind for the rest of the day. "Always wake up your writer early, so you can spend the day together."[^4] Regular practice at this will enable you to go deeper, quicker into your senses when writing.[^5] You don't have to write strictly about one object the whole time. "Think of it as sense-bound free association," writes Pat.[^6] Visit objectwriting.com for a daily word.[^7] [This site](journeytoparnassus.com/tools/object-writing/prompt/) also has prompts. Andrea Stolpe offers a take on object writing that includes some commentary, or "telling," and she calls it "destination writing."[^2] ([[Show first, then tell]].) In her own words, "Destination writing is sense-bound free writing directed at a place, a person, or a time instead of an object."[^8] Object writing is concerned with "what," but you can also incorporate who, when, and where into your destination writing.[^9] From here, you can [[Furnish your song]] with some of your object writing. [^1]: [[Writing Better Lyrics]] pg. 16 [^2]: [[Writing Better Lyrics]] pg. 37-38 [^3]: [[Writing Better Lyrics]] pg. 455 [^4]: [[Writing Better Lyrics]] pg. 20 [^5]: [[Writing Better Lyrics]] pg. 21 [^6]: [[Writing Better Lyrics]] pg. 22 [^7]: [[Writing Better Lyrics]] pg. 37 [^8]: https://www.andreastolpe.com/articles/destination-writing [^9]: [[Writing Better Lyrics]] pg. 39