Songs usually start with the melody for me - I've very rarely been able to write a song for a given topic, and when I do, it doesn't have much staying power for me. Usually it starts with playing around on an instrument, or hearing a melody in my head, and the melody inspires the lyric. However, like El Greko, I always make sure that the foot of the lyric matches the demands of the melody. No accents on the wrong syllABle for for me!

And I write them quickly - 30 minutes to an hour and a hald, tops. I can think of only one or two songs that ever took me more than a day to write, and thes etook two. As I sing them, they evolve - I correct a fact, or try singing it in a differnt way, or refine the lyrics. I amke sure not to repeat words too often or have rhymes that are too obvious. And if a song isn't working out, I give up.

I'm writing a lot fewer songs than I used to - when I was in college I wrote a song a month, and some of them were pretty good. But most of them weren't really keepers. Now I write one or two a year, most of them keepers, and just keep my ears firmly rooted in the good music that's all around.

My most recent song grew out of a lullabye my mother used to sing to me when I was a child - and somehow developed a story of parents who, through war and economic necessity, were unable to be with their child at night. (It's better in song form!) Where did it come from? I don't know; it was just there. But I like it fairly well.

A friend once told me: "Don't plot. Write." It was good advice.

Dan Schatz