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Often it is something I say in conversation that comes back to mind later. I play around, fiddle with it, and eventually get a first verse and a chorus. The rest of the lyric usually shows up anywhere from a couple of hours, to a day or two later. The lyric then gets fiddled with some more over a couple of weeks, or a month. By then I am often working on two or three more. (Or I used to be. Things have slowed down recently).

Sometimes a hook, or a chorus, just shows up and I can't place what started the idea.

A lyric I wrote last year arrived after I started thinking about a piece of highway I used to drive on my way up home from a city downstate.

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Johnson.