You said in a previous answer that you used to write down all your music and only learned to use voice memos/improvised riffs in 2011. I can only write music the second way, and I find it very, very difficult to write music notation-first. Did you learn to write music that way in music school, or is that your "natural" composing style? Do you think it's worth it for me to force myself to write music on paper before touching the keyboard/guitar as a learning experience?
do whatever works. for a long time i was unable to do it the 'memo' way ... because how do you figure out which part to start with? how do you figure out when something is final? all kinds of questions, my mind would fall apart. so eventually i just said, 'well, i have to start somewhere' and i figured i was literate enough to just hit the page and start writing. but this results in a very strange kind of writing (think "modern woes" or "rabbit snakes") where you start with some completely random garbage, and then that part is final. and you have to move on to the next part. so you get this disjointed thing-after-thing format, almost never obeying any repeating form.