Don't Edit Your Lyrics Too Soon

I get it, sometimes you just want to get to the next step of your songwriting process more quickly. Once you have your initial lyrics, you’re ready to dive into edit mode.

Maybe you’re even following my advice by doing iterative lyric writing. 

But it’s important not to put your editing hat on too soon. 

There are 2 main reasons for this.

Editing Phase Implies Some Level of Commitment

The first reason you shouldn’t be so quick to jump into editing is it implies that you’ve committed to refining what you’ve already written instead of continuing to write something new.

We shouldn’t do this too early, because we may not have found the golden lyrical ideas and story points of each section. Editing refines what you already have, but it doesn’t usually result in something totally new. 

Think of it like this. If you crashed on a desert island, found a spot that seemed good enough to survive, and then decided to not even bother looking for a better spot, what’s the issue with that?

Well, right around the corner, there may be a place flush with vegetation you can eat, a better shelter, and a nicer view. But you stopped as soon as you found good enough. Now, sure, you can fortify your current shelter, try to cultivate the couple of edible plants you do have and end up ok. 

But you also could have taken an hour to explore more and find the perfect place. A place where survival would have been much easier and you would enjoy it much more.

If you jump into editing too fast, you’ve missed all the opportunities to explore different story and lyrical ideas that might end up being much better than the first set of good ideas you get. Once you start editing, you’re now stuck with the original lyric idea.

Once You Start Editing, It’s Hard to Go Back

You might be thinking “But I can still go back to writing new lyrics after I start editing!”

Technically, yes. But will you? Once we move on to the next stage, it’s so hard to go back. 

After you record a video, and then you notice mistakes in filming when you start editing, are you going to re-record the video or try as hard as you can to “fix it in post”? 

Once you buy your first house, do you think you’ll ever want to live in an apartment again?

Once you make $80k a year, do you think you’d be happy making $50k again?

No. We don’t like to go backwards, so we will do just about anything to do what we perceive is moving forward. Once you put on that editing hat, you’re not going to want to go back to writing. 

So stay in the writing stage longer. Win the psychological game against yourself. Dedicate yourself to writing before you dive into editing.