Imperfectionist Song Society

The
Imperfectionist
Song Society

I was first introduced to the offerings of Miles of Music by my friend Dawn Landes. She has friends who run this amazing camp for musicians and they had begun offering Zoom classes for songwriters based on a camp tradition called “Challenge Accepted” where campers woke up to a prompt and were able to perform their resulting song that evening for the group. The internet version of this game is called the Imperfectionist Song Society (ISS), and it is the single most important thing that has shifted my identity and work as a songwriter.

Over the last few years, I have participated in four sessions with ISS, and during each session, you are put through 5 weeks of the following paces:

Tuesday: The prompt fairy delivers a prompt (a photo, a phrase, a constraint like “write a song that makes you want to move, in a minor key) to your inbox by early morning light.

Friday before midnight: Your song is due! Upload to the shared Google Drive folder, along with a doc of your lyrics.

Saturday and Sunday: Listen to everyone’s songs and leave 2-3 sentences of feedback per songwriting– what jumped out at you, what are you curious about, what made you listen deeply?

Monday: Meet on Zoom to discuss how the songs were born and ask questions of the group about your song.

Every group I have been in has been so supportive and wonderful. The leaders write along with us and model their process in a way that has helped me grow through practice.

In 2025, during ISS session 12.A, I wrote these four songs:

Finally Fine-
A song about how old wounds no longer have the same hold on me
The Good Place-
A trippy, goofy song about “something in the water”
Little Mermaid-
A song from my newest musical, A Girl Called Tiny
Muddy River-
A murder ballad that involves a lot of rain and a Toyota Tacoma

Feel free to take a listen to these demos I turned in to the Google Drive folders.

For anyone looking to enlist in a program that takes your songwriting to the next level, sign up for more info so that you can jump into an Imperfectionist Song Society Group. You won’t regret it!