Q. What is the "A Song A Week" challenge?

A. I'm writing and recording one new song per week, every week, in 2022.

Q. Why are you doing it?

A. Because it's fun, challenging, helps me reconnect with my musical side after putting it on the backburner for many years, and gives me something positive to focus on during this soul-sucking pandemic.

Q. Wait, who are you?

A. I'm Kate Sloan, a sex journalist and the author of some books on sex, kink and gender. When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a professional singer/songwriter – and for a while, I played local shows and released recordings regularly. But sex journalism ultimately called to me more as a career, so that's the path I took.

Q. So are all your songs about sex, then?

A. No, actually very few of them are. I've been writing songs for way longer than I've been writing about sex. There are definitely sexy and kinky themes that come up here and there, but in general I'd say that my songs are usually about love, connection, and my own weird brain.

Q. How are you defining a "song" for the purposes of this challenge?

A.  A song doesn't have to have two verses, a chorus and a bridge (although some of mine do). It doesn't have to hit a certain length in terms of word count or run time. It just has to feel like a complete piece of music with a beginning, middle and end.

Q. Where do you get your inspiration from?

A.  A lot of different places: my own life, other people's lives (including those of celebrities and fictional characters), books and articles I read, conversations, other musicians' songs, tweets, the news, etc. For a more detailed inspiration of the thinking behind each song, check out my songwriting diaries blog posts.

Q. How did you learn to play instruments and write songs?

A. I was very lucky to get to take piano lessons for most of my childhood, and also spent a few years doing guitar lessons and voice lessons. I'm self-taught on ukulele (although it's similar to guitar). I've picked up songwriting skills over many years from trying stuff out, absorbing other people's songs, and watching/reading interviews with famous songwriters (Paul Zollo's book  Songwriters on Songwriting is great for this). IMO one of the best things an aspiring songwriter can do is learn to play a bunch of classic songs – I like jazz standards and Beatles tunes for this – because it'll teach you a lot about how chord progressions work, among other things.

Q. Can I try this challenge too?

A.  Of course! It's definitely not an original idea – after I decided to do it, I discovered there's a whole Song A Week subreddit already, and also that many other songwriters have issued themselves this same challenge over the years. I hope you enjoy it if you give it a shot!