Well, Wordsworth's got good advice for writing poetry. It's equally good advice for writing lyrics -- if perhaps less applicable to tunes.

I think it was in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802), I could be wrong. But he urges poets to write more or less "in the heat of the moment" of whatever experience and emotion they are writing about. Write furiously, sloppily, just don't stop writing until all the emotion is on paper.

Then, set the writing aside. Come back to it later when you're calmer, and THEN work on cleaning up things like rhyme, rhythm, scansion, etc.

That way, you neither lose the principal emotion, nor allow the work to suffer from clumsy or uneven flow.

Slán,

~Fionn

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