Having been to various songwriting workshops, there seem to be as many schools of thought as there are songwriters.
One person seems to think that there should always be one syllable per note, so you shouldn't do things like make the word "be" last over two notes: this just about rules out any chance of the singer putting in any ornamentation. It was also done at the expense of carrying "weak" words such as short prepositions over the end of the lines and making them into long and "important" or stressed syllables,(totally incongruous) sounding to me (IMHO)just wrong, and completely artificial.
I would rather go with the advice of another writer, to READ the words, and see how they READ naturally before trying to set a tune and therefore musical meter to them.