I’m guessing that, when working on a lyric, most of us still either write it down or type it… as opposed to recording every variation (does anyone do that?).

When I’m trying to write or improve a lyric it goes something like this: I have a notebook in my hands or on a table. The guitar is next to me – I often need to sing a lyric with the chords.

I look at and sing through what I’ve already got… and eventually an idea occurs to me for the next line.

This is the crucial moment.

Because… except on the rare occasion when I’m thrilled with my idea, the backlash starts. The self-talk about how it’s a stupid line, it’s a bad, clumsy phrase, it’s a cliche, etc.

It’s the crucial moment because of this: if I expect to make progress on the lyric, it’s the moment when I have to ignore that voice in my head.

Why? No, not because the negative voice is wrong; more often than not it’s right. Most of the lines I come up with are overly familiar, ones I (and others) have used many times before. But if I stifle the impulse that led to the weak line… I’m also stifling the good ideas that could come next… if I don’t start censoring myself.

As far as I can determine (I’m not a neurologist!), good ideas and bad ideas come from the same place. They’re just thoughts; impulses.

Most of my ideas, my creative impulses, are not good ideas. They’re just ideas. But, as a writer, ideas are all I have. And to write, I have to turn them into actions. So I have to let them flow, understanding that they will emerge without, in advance, differentiating good from bad. Or, put more aptly, the useful from the not useful.

It is my job to separate the wheat from the chaff. But that’s later. In fact, whether ideas end up being classified as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ often depends less on their inherent quality and more on the context they land in.

When that voice tells me “It stinks, don’t bother writing that one down’, I have to ignore it. Not because it’s wrong… more likely it’s right. But I need to just get it down and move on.

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