I have been in a musical project for over two years now with a good friend who is a great writer. When we first started out, we fleshed out some of his songs and I was always in awe of how easy writing lyrics came to him. After the first year of retooling some of his more basic riffs to fit our vibe, I decided to take a crack at writing songs. After all, I'm not in love with the idea of not contributing something more to the project. I wrote my first song last fall (I think) and it the process was something like this:
I had an idea for a song floating around in my head since I was a teenager. I got really stoned on my favorite hike one day and a Doors style lyric popped into my head about a specific spot I liked to stop and contemplate. I told my friend about it and he seemed excited about the idea. I sat down and wrote what came to me without focusing on how it scanned or whether it had a cohesive structure. I let it breathe for a week or so and went back and revisited it. I cleaned up some of the wording and made it fit a beat. Then I started strumming a couple of chords to try to get it to fit. Eventually I had the rudiments of a song and I brought it to him and explained what I was aiming for. We played around with what I had and tried to walk it back from sounding like The Doors and made it more of our thing. We played a raw version of it and each playthrough, it revealed itself more and more. Now I have something I can be proud of!
Here's a couple of things he told me about writing and here's a couple of things I learned just from reading other people's experiences.
Just write. A lot of what you write will be crap. It's ok. If it's worth keeping, keep it and let it breathe a bit and come back to it with fresh eyes.
Kill your darlings. This is a piece of writing advice that you would learn in a writing class. If you are hung up on something like a girl's name, or a certain reference you feel like you need to include in all of your work, stop doing it. It limits you.
Do you really like a particular song? Write your own version of it! I mean, don't get sued, but remember... Talent borrows, genius steals. It might not be something you show to people, but it's another piece of writing you have under your belt.
Write down all of your snippets in a notebook or on your phone. You would be surprised what you can flesh out from just one line.
Don't be afraid of sounding too derivative. Most music has already been written in one form or another. It's ok to drift in and out of styles. There's a difference between being inspired by something and completely ripping it off.
My buddy always tells me to not overthink it. I have a tendency to aim for the top every time and it paralyses me. Not everything needs to be top tier
I'm interested to see if anyone else has good advice because I'm just starting to find my voice as well.