My Writing Process

For many years, I have written music reviews for this blog, as well as others with which I’ve collaborated, and I wanted to share my process for completing these tasks.

My writing process is relatively similar in each case, although it sometimes takes me more time. Generally, to write an album review, first I listen to the album, while watching the lyrics and taking notes of my impressions. I write how much I like the song, what the lyrics mean, and how I like the music, and if anything stands out for me. This usually takes me an hour (depending on the length of the album, plus 20–30 minutes added to the album length).

Then I read information about the band and the album, on the Internet and in social media, I research about them and confirm data like the band members, the band’s history, discography, and all the objective info.

I also like to watch recent YouTube interviews of the band, especially if they talk about the new album, and I watch YouTubers who talk about the album concept, the lyrics, or the music itself. I take notes of everything that is interesting to me, and then I write the first draft. This process, so far, lasts a couple of hours, yet the videos sometimes take several days, so I watch them during the week.

Once I have the draft ready, I add the album cover, band picture, Spotify album link, and the singles videos. I edit and proofread everything, the grammar, the redaction, and spelling with the Grammarly app (since English is not my first language, I make spelling mistakes). Then I hit the publish button and share the post on my social media accounts.

Overall, it takes 4 or 5 hours in one day or divided between a couple of days since I start the post until I publish it.

For concert reviews, I take notes while I’m at the concert, write the setlist, and take some pictures. Then I add these notes and impressions to a small bio and data from the band, and the rest of the process is similar to reviewing an album.

When I write about music news or my thoughts about a specific topic or band, is a looser process. I also research the theme of the post, but since it is more about my opinion on that, I write freely.

To sum up, besides researching the data and impressions, for any type of post I’m writing, I also add my own point of view, my own knowledge about the band or topic. How I got to know them, my story with that, or how important they are to me, because a post without a heart is not worthy for me to create.