It seems my songwriting has woken up again - it's been a year and more, and there have been reasons, and it's welcome back. I shall now proceed to burble about what this means and how it works (in my head, anyway). 

It usually starts with a seed - a phrase, something misread, something seen, perhaps a juxtaposition, sometimes something you think somebody is going to say before the conversation takes a left turn and you're left with the ghost of a conversation... whatever it is, it shines like a dropped ring on the pavement. I pick it up and put it in my pocket. Every so often I take it out and look at it, and sooner or later, if it's viable, it'll sprout.

This is the best part, for me. This is the sweetest combination of anticipation and joy and blind inspiration. It's a heady mix. Sometimes, just occasionally, it grows all the way up into a song while I just hold it in my hands and breathe. More often, and this is as it should be, it grows for a bit and then slows, and then I need to shape it by hand the rest of the way. This part is fun, too, because it's like solving a puzzle; somewhere in there is the shape of the song, and it's my job to reveal it.

It isn't just the words, after all, and it isn't just the music, either. The form matters, and so does the voice, and the language-set, and the rhythm, and the rhyme structure or lack of it, and the angle.

I'm playing with angle right now. I've got a little sprouting thing of a song in my pocket, and it's just at the point where it wants me to take over and shape it the rest of the way.

I haven't decided the angle yet, not quite. It won't be 'There is a XXX' , because I usually prefer something a little more oblique. I've toyed with 'I am the XXX' and also with 'There was a XXX but there isn't anymore...' '...because of me...' , likewise 'There is a XXX but I didn't know it when I met it and I'm sorry now' and 'There is a XXX and it's what I become'. Then there's 'I wish I were like the XXX' and 'There is no XXX but I wish there were'.

You see? There are angles all the way round the subject, in at least three dimensions. Any of them may make a decent song. One of them will prove best for the subject in hand. Making decisions along the way and eliminating the less-good versions of it are how we get there.

Suddenly there are so many things to write about... a pocketful of seeds is a fine thing to have on a late October day.