G'day Sharon, I guess I got to say first I will be forever grateful to you for your kind words and I got to confess that the more I see in the writing of lyrics the more I get confused. Would you please explain what is a 'Match Meter, Syllables and Stresses on the first write.
I am no quitter, but someone else told me it would take ten years minimum, to learn the writing of lyrics and I wonder if I should quit and only collaborate with someone who could polish and make my lyrics right and write music for them. I first asked on the lyric feedback board for a composer who would be prepard to write music for one of my lyrics.
I wonder if that is the best way for me to go. I must say that I have never written prose, I have for the last ten years, there's that ten years thing again, been writing manuscripts . It all started when I got caught up in a wrangle with a bank that lasted seven years in court. I have written several manuscripts and so far all I got was the pleasure of writing them. I have already confessed my need for money and I wonder if I should follow my original plan. Please tell me what you reckon about this. Oh I have rewritten my lyrics for a song I posted as 'One from the heart',I will post that now, just in case you recommend that I should quit. Thanks a million for your great advice/s and info they have been very helpful to me. best regards to you, Ray in Australia.

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<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Sharon I. Wells:
AW Ray, I got to give you an A Plus for effort and all heart. Keep working, you DID clean this up nicely, but as you admitted to Graham there's lyrical structures that you don't understand. But don't get discouraged, this is one heck of a place to learn. I hope you've spent more time reading different lyrical postings here and I strongly urge you to "study" the structure of hit songs of today and years past. It will open a whole new lyrical world up to you. You say you have a way with words, well let's develop them into lyrical words; not just thought words. I just read in a lyrical instruction book this morning about 3 am that the difference between just writing poetry or prose to lyrics is like this: When you write lyrics you should have a basic "running" melody in your head as you write--thus your words will just about automatically match meter, syllables and stresses on the first write, making any rewrites just to tighten the song up and maybe use better descriptive words. Say you get a lyric in mind and you want to use an old overused cliche' in it; well that's fine with the first write, but then come back to that old worn out cliche or phrase and rewrite that dude into "new" fresh words.
I know that a lot of the hits today seemed filled with old cliche's and phrases and all the time the powers that be are hollering "rephrase" those old cliche's, give us something new, fresh--maybe it's saying the same thing, but give it to us in a new way. Does that help you any?
Just don't give up because you're not sure of what goes where, if you really like writing as you seem to do. Read, listen, look and reread--study songs that are already published, recorded and study the lyrical boards, go to any songwriting chapters if they are near you. Just keep struggling til you get it. Gosh, we had a lady on here just a bit over a year ago--she changed from poetry to lyrical writing and withing three months she was writing better than some of us who'd been at it more than several years. She put everything she had into it and learned, plus she's just darned talented too. Hey, Sunny, I'm talking about you...my dear!</font>

Ray Thyer