It's always interesting to me to hear how different songwriters approach the task (if you can call it that). I guess it is a task if, say you are under contract to produce songs for an album, or a radio show or something, and have a deadline. But alanabit's songs seem to almost "write themselves" - I've heard other songwriters use that expression.

That must be a great gift to have - I just wish it would happen to me like that.

I wonder if there's any evidence that songs that appear almost spontaneously like that, are any better than those that the writer has had to toil over - or vice versa?

Paul McCartney is quoted above as a good melodist (if I can use that term). One of his most successful songs "Yesterday" apparently came to him in a dream, and he wrote nonsense lyrics to it at first ("Scrambled Eggs" was the working title ISTR). That seems to support the 'spontaneity' argument. Over the years, especially since the end of the Beatles, he has been responsible for a lot of dross - I wonder how much of that was 'spontaneous'?