I'm a poet and wonder if song is the next form of my art. I have little skill in music; words are my clay, and I can sculpt them to any shape I desire...but what is the link between the beauty of words and the resplendence of music?
there are many different ways of doing all this, but in my experience, the music picks up a lot of the slack. most great songs look very short on paper (if you just look at the lyrics), and also look very nothing. most times when people write things that are meant to stand on their own without music, and then try to put to music, there is usually way too much content to fit in a song, and often there are many words that look good on paper but just aren't very singable. then again, this can be done many many different ways. the only way i know is to do it all at the same time. i think songwriting might be more similar to writing a script for a movie than poetry.