Page 12 - Song Maps - A New System to Write Your Best Lyrics - Simon Hawkins

Chapter 2 - Five reasons to use Song Maps
Since discovering Song Maps some twelve years ago, I have built up a bank of around 500 writable ideas that travel with me everywhere. They have been instrumental in writing #1 hit songs, Grammy-nominated songs, Dove-nominated musicals and the Hymn of 2015.
They have also helped me:
Transform my lyric writing from flat, 2D lyrics to glorious 3D full-color lyrics Saved me precious creative time during a busy schedule
Enabled me to look at titles in totally new ways
Helped me serve my co-writers better in the writing room, and
Completely banish "Second Verse Curse"
In short, they transformed the way I write songs and the way I feel about writing, eliminating many of the frustrating, stressful, random elements that can often sabotage a writing session.
In this chapter, I'll briefly run through how these benefits can transform your writing before discussing in later chapters what Song Maps are in detail, how to use them in your writing and offer seven universal Song Maps that you can immediately use in your own writing.
While I often talk about songwriting in the context of co-writing, all of the ideas and principles in this book are totally applicable, in fact I'd say even more applicable, to writing solo.
A little planning goes a long, long way
As songwriters, we love to spend time in our right brains, where we can be artistic, creative, imaginative, intuitive, emotional, spatial. Some songwriters I know love it so much that I won't even schedule a co- write with them because I know from experience they're too creative to even turn up for the co-write!
But for anyone willing to embrace a little more left-brain processing, applying a little bit of planning to our writing goes a long, long way. In fact, I'd even suggest it's the most logical thing to do.