Working on a New Song

I have been coming up with ideas for some new musicals and writing an Arts Council application.  But a new song has been working its way through under all this and now I have begun to work on it.  This method often works out well - the ideas start to build up, I write notes and then when I can't bear to live without writing it I put it all together and begin. Although, I am not sure whether this method is any better than having to write a song under pressure, sometimes those are the best songs, because I don't have time to edit myself too much.

But now that I've begun it looks as if the title may change.  Titles are so important - if the title changes, the whole meaning of the song changes.

I discovered a wonderful book to work up song lyrics in, called The Lyricists Notebook.  I carry it everywhere.  It's about the size of an exercise book so it's easy to carry around with you, has really lovely paper, spaces to fill in about the location you wrote the song in, chord boxes, date, and inspiration and a few quotes thrown in to amuse you  - like:

"Imagination is the key to my lyrics.  The rest is painted with a little science fiction."  Jimi Hendrix - I am not sure what he means but when I am hunting down a rhyme it makes me laugh.

The great thing about this book is that when I come back to work on a song it always surprises me how much I have already written and the lists of rhymes are so useful but sometimes I have absolutely no memory of verses I worked on in it and they feel like a gift!!