How I Write My Songs

Taking out the garbage it occurred to me to write a song with the line "I'm so glad that I don't live in a flounder." A flounder being an old, narrow building with windows only on one side, and with a roof that slopes up to the windowless side. At least that's what they call those buildings, or parts of buildings that jut out behind the main building, in my area and, I understand, in Philadelphia. And when I say "old . . . building" I mean from 1800 or so. I don't live in a flounder, but one juts out behind the building I live in, and I walk past the flounder on the way to, and on the way back from, the alley where I leave the garbage to be picked up.

When I got back to the apartment I played around with the flounder line, singing it to my girlfriend, who asked what song I was singing. (It came into my head with a tune, but I won't bother trying to write it out here.) That she thought it was a song seemed like a good sign to me. I decided to try to make it into one.

I like repetition: not only repeated choruses, but repeated lines or phrases. So I thought, why not "I'm so glad that I don't live in a flounder, that I don't live in a flounder I feel glad"? And rhymes can lead to ideas that you'd never have otherwise. Instead of "I'm so glad" why not "I get mad"? And instead of "that I don't live in a flounder" why not "when I'm likened to a rounder"? Rounder not only rhymes, but it's also, like flounder, a word that not everyone would know. (I only know it from folk songs.) And "likened to" also sounds old. With the repetition, the line became "I get mad when I'm likened to a rounder, when I'm likened to a rounder I get mad."

Choruses allow you to take the song somewhere else entirely if you want. What occurred to me as a first line for the chorus, probably because it was time to get ready for bed, was "Well I haven't slept a wink since the last time that I slept." Then, probably because of the internal rhyme, and because I frequently write about drinks and drinking, I came up with "And I haven't had a drink since the last time that I drank."

Then, to tie it all together, I put in another "I'm so glad that I don't live in a flounder/That I don't live in a flounder I feel glad."

While I played around with these lines I got my guitar and picked out the melody in my head and figured out what chords would fit with it, modifying the melody slightly in the process.

And so I had verse one, with an internal chorus that I could use in the other verses if I wanted. And I was on my way to writing a new song!