It would also be nice to have a bit of detail on your song "long long long journey", too!
the chorus was written first. i believe there were 2 writing prompts at play there. a random word selection (always 2 words), it was 'campaigning' and 'stress', and also i believe there was also a musical prompt which is to use a 4415 based chord scheme at the top of the chorus. It appears that that song 'selection' occured on the same day as the original idea session. this is common, because when starting a new song process, first i do a series of new idea genration sessions, and then, separate from that, i do a song selection process (where i select which one is recorded) which can include the entire list of all song ideas, not just from that session. But quite often, the newer ones win, because for whatever reason they might be stronger and feel more relevent. So that one was selected, and it certainly was not more than a chorus (i think the chorus was probably fully written at the time of the selection, but nothing else). So, as with the other example, everything that happens after that is just part of the songwriting process, where i know that that's the song i'm doing. so i have to just put in the work to get it where it needs to be. So in this case, it's 'chorus was written first', which is always strange and quite a backwards puzzle to do, especially if you determine that the chorus does not go at the beginning of the song. Often in those cases, the verse solution will arrive melodically first, with almost no lyric. and i think this was definitely the case here, and it seemed to want to be something like "i still remember the first day that...?' ... or 'i remember the..first..?? something'. I recall rattling around for quite some time trying to find something powerful enough to be the first line. and i believe, as is so often the case, it was in the shower that the actual solution arrived, 'i remember the moment that my dreams were broken.' And from there, as always, it's just the regular forward writing process as usual, trying to figure out the best way for it to go on a moment to moment basis after that