u/RickBirthday8

I wrote what felt like the best bridge I'd ever come up with at around midnight last week. I was genuinely excited about it, saved it, went to sleep. Read it the next morning and it was honestly kind of embarrassing. I don't know if nighttime me has worse judgment or just lower inhibitions, but this keeps happening and I can't figure out if I should trust the late-night version or the morning version. Does the time of day actually affect the quality of what you write, or is one of those versions of me just wrong about everything?

I've written a lot but never shown my lyrics to another person. Part of me wants feedback, and part of me wants to hide them forever 😅

I have pages of lines and ideas, but very few complete songs. Just curious if that's normal when you're starting out.

I've been writing lyrics for about six months and I still feel like I'm copying artists I listen to. At what point did your writing start feeling like "you"?

When I write something, it sounds great while I'm writing it. Then I read it the next day and suddenly it feels awkward. Does this happen to anyone else?

Six months of writing and I finally showed something to another person. It was a close friend, completely unsolicited — I just texted her a verse one night before I could talk myself out of it and immediately wanted to take it back.

She said she loved it. I know that's what friends say. But she also quoted a specific line back at me and said it reminded her of something she went through, which felt different from just "this is good."

What I noticed: the terror of sharing it was completely separate from whether it was actually good or not. I think I'd been treating keeping it private as a way to protect it from judgment, but I'm starting to think it was also a way to protect myself from finding out if it meant anything to anyone else.

I don't know what I expected. Maybe I expected it to feel like exposure. It felt more like relief. Anyone else remember the first time they shared their writing?

I'm not a musician — I can't play anything and I don't really sing. I just write words. But lately I've noticed that when I write I have a vague melody in my head that affects everything: the syllable count, where the stresses fall, which words feel right and which feel clunky even if they mean the right thing.

I wonder if that's holding me back or helping me. Like, am I writing lyrics or am I writing words that only work for a melody no one else can hear?

How do people who aren't musicians think about this? Do you write to a melody, write for rhythm only, or just write and let whoever makes music figure out how to fit it? And does it matter if you ever want someone to actually sing what you write?