The part that's actually the job

People ask where songs come from and I've written about that already. Nobody ever asks about the second part, which is where the work actually lives.

A song shows up in about twenty minutes. That's the fun part, and honestly it's mostly not skill — it's being awake and paying attention on a day when something arrives. Then you've got a version that's eighty percent right with one line in it doing nothing, and that line takes four days.

I've learned to spot the dead ones. A dead line is usually a line that exists because the rhyme needed somewhere to land. It says something true and generic, the song sags for two seconds, and almost nobody could point at it — but they feel it. Their attention loosens half a notch and you've lost a little of them for the rest of the verse.

The fix is almost never a better word. It's going back and asking what that line is supposed to be doing in the story, which is the question I skipped on the way through the first time.

I've thrown out finished verses that were perfectly fine. Fine is the enemy. A song people keep has no seconds in it where nothing is happening.

None of that is glamorous and all of it is the job. The twenty minutes are a gift. The four days are mine.