Originally Posted by: SpiritintheskyEither. If you get a good line, write it down and keep it. People like Bruce Springsteen have massive books with all their ideas written down which he goes back to. Any thoughts you, melody's, riffs, ideas for song titles, write them down.

I'd recommend recording riffs and melodies too, as I personally find it quite difficult to transcribe my riffs with the right kind of notes.

I suggest that you just try a few different approaches and see what works for you. I find that for me, the best approach is to come up with either a cool riff or a drum-pattern (since I also do MIDI tracks for my own stuff), and then I just take it from there, and typically improvise some lyrics as I go. It works for me, but that doesn't mean it's going to work for anyone else :)