[solidwalnut]

Frank--

I think there comes a time when you just have to 'do it'. That is, somehow 'cement' or commit what you've written to some form. Some form of audio recording, or some form of publishing your writings. Something for the purpose of saying, 'ok, here it is'...even if this 'here it is' is only for the purpose of you and people you wish to help you by hearing your progress, or for the purpose of critiquing. It gives you some sort of time capsule that you can look back and see the journey. It makes it seem real.

Soliciting critique is a marvelous way of getting other points of view on how others see your writing. The critiquing doesn't always make sense, doesn't always offer you something new or may not contain a ton of useful info for you. But what it does is it offers you the mind of the critiquer of how they see songwriting. The most often used phrase from critiquers is, '...just my opinion, take what you need and leave the rest...' I've submitted some songs for critiquing before and then decided not touched my original, even though some of the suggestions made some kind of sense. Some songs I've changed entire verses. They're not writing the song, you are. But the whole deal is that you need to get some sort of idea of who your audience is with the song, then you'll know whether or not it might need tweaking.

Like Les says, there's a ton of books on songwriting out there. And it might be good for you to pick up a book or two. Much like lyric writing, writing a book on it is a very subjective thing; alot of opinion. But the value they can have is to point out different forms of lyric writing and technique. Honing the craft should be a big priority.

But you can get alot of that by hanging around songwriting sites. A good one that comes to mind is musesmuse.com. Wow. Or become a member of ASCAP. This stuff fuels the fire of the desire.

Steve