Page 24 - Song Maps - A New System to Write Your Best Lyrics - Simon Hawkins

So she turned the page in her hook book, and the same thing happened all over again. "Next."
This continued until she finally got to the end of her book, having offered some 40 ideas, which were all met with the same disdain by her co-writers.
At this point, one of the two veterans picked a title out of thin air and started riffing with it on his guitar. Before they knew it, they were writing his idea.
It could be that they wrote the best idea in the room and got a song out of it. But it cost them a relationship because she would never write with them again. The way they went about it–an act of creative terrorism–also trashed my friend's confidence.
My point is this: the way we do things matters. The relationship is greater than the song. But to guard against this happening to us we need to turn up to our co-writes with the very best ideas we can muster. Writable ideas. I'll explain what I mean by a writable idea later in this book.
Building your idea bank
Over the years, Song Maps have been invaluable in preparing me for co-writing. They have helped me turn up ready to serve my co-writer as best as I'm able. There is nothing better than arriving at a co-write with a bank of well-thought-out ideas in mind for your co-writer and on hearing the first or second idea they look up from their laptop and with their face lit up they say,
"I'd LOVE to write that!"
So, over the last ten years, at any one time I've had around 500 writable ideas in my "idea bank." And Song Maps have helped in so many ways:
At the preparation stage, they enable me to generate quickly a large number of writable ideas to take into a co-write, targeted to the kind of songs my co-writer likes to write.
In advance of the co-write, knowing that I have done everything I can to provide myself and my co-writer with great ideas during the session significantly reduces the stress of it. Just the act of sitting in a writing room with an amazingly talented writer, frankly, is pressure enough without stressing about coming up with a knockout song idea on the spot.
During the co-write, by having at my disposal a number of places the song could optimally go, Song Maps allow me to provide options to my co-writer to help deliver the full emotional impact of the song we are writing.
Also, during the co-write, if I don't have to worry about where a lyric is going, it allows me to focus totally on other elements of the craft such as structure, rhyme scheme, prosody, words to music, etc.
I have one co-writer friend who often turns up to a session with a song pre-written. She is brilliant, super- creative and super-talented, so it always works. But I'm not sure I trust my own ability to pre-judge what my co-writers will want to write to that extent. I need to have more than one idea up my sleeve.