Find a private songwriting teacher. Check with your local music store to get in touch with professionals who can help you. Music store bulletin boards can be a good way to get in touch with teachers who offer private music lessons.
Prepare for your lessons by writing poetry on your own. Explore your creative voice and develop an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses with verses, choruses and rhymes. This will help your songwriting teacher to find areas in which you can improve.
Make lists of characters, stories and conflicts that capture your imagination. It could be your best friend, a family member or someone you've read about in the newspaper. You'll find the inspiration for songs by thinking critically about the things that stir your emotions.
Learn about song structures. Work with your teacher to understand the difference between verses, choruses and bridges. Learn how each portion of the song can be used to advance a narrative and convey emotion.
Learn the basics of harmonic progressions. Most popular songs are written in major or minor keys. These keys are used as musical building blocks upon which your lyrical melodies will be constructed. The most common harmonic progressions for blues, rock, punk and country songs use "triads" built off the first, fourth, fifth and sixth scale degrees.
Write songs utilizing different time signatures. The vast majority of popular music is written in duple meter, meaning the rhythmic patterns are built in multiples of two. Waltzes and a few famous country and pop songs are written in triple meter.
Create as many songs as you can. Use the time in your songwriting lessons to explore as much about the craft as you can.
Get constructive feedback from your songwriting teacher. Songwriting is a very personal creative enterprise, so receiving criticism can sometimes be difficult. Take constructive feedback from your teacher as an opportunity to improve your songs.
Talk to other songwriting students about their work. Compare your musical ideas to get a fresh perspective on your work. Because you're both working through the process together, you'll be dealing with many of the same problems and obstacles.
Study songwriting outside of your lessons by reading instructional books and taking online song writing tutorials. The ActiveMusician website keeps a good list of different songwriting resources available on the Internet (see Resources below).