I write. I write stories and I write songs. I don’t know if I’m any good at it or not, people seem to like what I write, both my prose and my songs. I feel a need to express how I write songs, maybe just to organize it in my own mind. This is how it seems to me.

My songs are all stories, about people, places, and things. I don’t write much about the personal/social feelings. I don’t try to describe love or anguish, though there are ancillary references in my words for those. And in one way or another the stories are real for me, some may be dreams or misremembered tales, but when I describe a place or person in my song he/she/it is real.

My prose stories, by and large, are short, and my songs are too. I have a couple of songs with four verses, a bridge, and chorus, but most songs are two or three verses, maybe a chorus or bridge. I usually leave room for instrumental breaks because the songs are all designed to be played by a string band and I play with magical musicians who allow the music to take care of itself. I’m not going to talk about the musical part as much as I am the story, because, for me, the story is the song.

I use a thesaurus. A lot. I have an app on my phone and my computers have it bookmarked. I use it to get rid of the tired old words I always fall back on. When I start realizing I used the same word or phrase in numerous pieces, I go looking for substitutes.

It’s also a good way to find something more rhythmic or alliterative to replace a word that might sound flat or maybe not fill the space or maybe contains too many syllables.

I talk about singular events usually and many of my stories are really about very mundane experiences that offer glimpses of the magnificence of life on Earth. The things I remember are those.

I wrote a song about a dream once. It was a very vivid dream and the song is vivid as well. I wrote a song about some friends of mine from high school, four stories. I chronicled their lives as I imagined them to be.

I wrote a song about my two sons. And it was my first song, some have said, my best. I didn’t know I could write songs then. In it, I imagine my sons as grown-up humans. It is fairly accurate.

I wrote a song for each of my two daughters, and both include glimpses of how I saw them and how they would be later in life.

There are songs about a few other people I’ve written as well. But most of my stories are about pieces of this show that stick out for me.

Most of the time I sit at the park with my guitar and noodle for a while until I come up with a structure of sorts. Then comes the story. And that’s usually determined by the first few lines that I get down. The words, They are important. How they fit, how they sound. And when I get a phrase that makes my rhythm and fits in the chord progression I can usually find a story that line will work in. Then I tell the story. Many times I’m two or three lines in before the story finds me. The words fit and like most everything in life nothing is ever brand new. It has all happened before so sometimes words fit a variety of stories. When I realized that it was so liberating to know what story I wanted to tell was not as important as the way the words sounded. When the words are perfect, it’s easy to line it up with a story of my past. I have a song that the first line that came out was. “The mirror behind the bar showed my party. I sing about it in a whacked out tune.” The rhythm and the way the words flow, then spit just worked with the rhythm. And low and behold I had a story that fit perfectly about a bar fight in my life

Many times the whole story is told in one verse and the second verse may be an “after” glimpse. Life later on and the connection.

My song Storm in Paradise includes three different stories, all connected and all stories of the end of something grand, a tragic goodbye, a new love, and a return to love.

I spend a lot of time getting what I think are the right words, they have to sound right, they have to be easy to pronounce, and they have to convey meaning. And the thesaurus is open on my phone laying there on the picnic table. The next song you write try using one, not to find the right word, but to find the best sound. Plug it in and try it. It may change the meaning some which many times makes the line even better, but if it has the rhythm it makes the song work. No one listens to the stories if the words don’t sound good.

Try singing your song with no instrument. I do that fairly often. It’s a very easy way to find the phrases that don’t flow or a word that needs to rhyme or it’s too hard and or too soft.

I usually get a song in one sit. I get the progression, structure, and rhythm and a basis for the story and I try to get all the verses hacked out so I don’t lose whatever thread of thought I had,  It takes a long time and lots of edits, changes in chording etc… from there to make the song finished. And the songs change over the years. Usually not the words, though I have noticed some small words have been changed in a few of my songs over time.

My process for writing the prose is different. I actually think of a story to tell first, and I have written a few songs with a purpose in mind of the story, the style, and even the key. I write a lot of waltzes. I like waltzes, they can be circular and I can imagine a couple swinging around on the dance floor, sometimes light on the feet and light on feel, sometimes dark and heavy, but always dancing in circles, like life seems to.

One song I wrote was a test I gave myself. I was sitting on my park bench and I thought, “Bet no one has ever written a song about playing marbles.” And I wrote it. I was a marble player when I was a boy, and the shuckin’ and jivin’ and bettin’ and raisin’ I learned made me what I have been all my life, a car salesman. I was good at marbles too.

That’s all I have right now. I’m sure there’s more, but use a damned thesaurus, it’s important.