Well, I think Marc B answered the question pretty honestly and accurately. There's so many lyric writers because it's something literally anyone can do - some better than others of course. To be honest, it's a completely futile pastime. But, as the great American icon John Wayne said: "Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway." So if you enjoy writing lyrics, go ahead and keep writing them, but understand and accept you may never get anywhere with them. There's something everyone has to come to terms with when you get into songwriting, be they a musician or lyricist: Being able to write a song is not an extraordinary skill, it's a noteworthy skill. Being able to write noteworthy songs is the extraordinary skill that you need to aspire to if you want to get anywhere.

I would say to lyric writers that the better the understanding you have of music, the more you put yourself above your peers. Learning an instrument is helpful, but learning to sing to the maximum of your ability is the best thing you can do. I see a lot of lyrics that are over structured, overly preoccupied with everything looking neat and tidy on the page, verbose, crammed and with no room for a singer to do what they like doing best - showing off the qualities of their voice. Being able to a sing to any extent opens up more melodic possibilities and means you can write from a singer's perspective.

I think putting your lyrics up in places like this is kind of showcasing your work and getting noticed. Ideally, you want a good melody writer to contact you and you and say, "Hey, I dig your lyrics, could you put some to this melody?" It's just my opinion, but the music first, lyrics second method generally yields better results. Doing it the other way around often leads to unoriginal, average songs.

Lucian