From the other side of the fence, as someone who once attended songwriters workshops there are certain things that I wanted to get from the group/experience.

I wanted someone to tell me the truth about what I had written, but in a way that would not discourage me to write more.

I wanted someone to show me how to get through the gaps - those odd lines that are needed to 'stitch' two or more good lines together to make sense of them.

I wanted someone to recognise that my style was mine, and not try to make me write in theirs.

I also wanted someone to tell me the trick of remembering my own songs, and of remembering any new tune I'd written to go with it.

In one session, what I got was a pretentious prig telling us what he had written and how much money it had made him. He was so bloody egotistical I never learned a thing except not to bother seeing him perform again! It basically turned into an 'I wrote this one, listen to it and tell me how brilliant I am' session that only served to boost his already over inflated ego.

The only good advice I got from that session was that songs are either stories or descriptive essays, and like stories should have a beginning, a middle and an end. And a parody should echo the original enough to be recognised.

Something that I learned from somewhere else, as a starting point was to take a well known song and write an opposite or reply to it. My example was 'The Recruited Collier' (What's the matter with you my love, and where's your dashing Jimmy) and that spawned 'the Recruited Colliers' lament' (somewhere in the Mudcat songbook). There are lots of songs from one point of view, so there should be plenty of scope there.

For the 'descriptive essay' song, choose something you feel strongly about, and describe it as poetically as possible.

And for a bit of fun, get everyone to write a 4 line verse (Claire de lune is a good tune for beginners) with a particular word in it (like vestibule, sausage or moose, anything at all!) and see if people collectively come up with a whole song.

Hope it works out OK. Basically if you go to jelly, just be yourself and be honest. Most people go to these workshops because they know that in them they have something that could be good, it's up to you to coax it out with a bit of cheese. They want to know how to write down their feelings and experiences, and how to fit it to a tune. They also want to know if the stuff they've already written has any value to it.

Mind you, you will always get the one who thinks they're the next Sy Kahn just because they got a prize once. These usually want you to listen to their stuff and no-one elses and are best left to get on with being egotistical in a corner somewhere.

LTS