Writing In The Moment: How I went From Stuck On A Song Lyric To My First Major Artist Cut

Back when I was beating the streets of Nashville looking for my first cut as a songwriter, I was asked to write a theme song for a TV show about Sisters. They wanted something in the vibe of Sarah McLachlan. As luck would have it my parents had just given me my childhood piano and it arrived just days before to Nashville. I stayed up very late that night banging out a melody on those old slightly out of tune keys and found a melody I really liked. (Much to the frustration on my downstairs neighbor!)

The next day I had an appointment to co- write with Irene Kelley and Tony Ramey, so I played them the tune. I also had a title I felt would work great “Second Chance”. They really liked it and we set out that morning around 10am to write the words. The first first and chorus came quickly and and then it happened- we got stuck! We tried line after line and nothing seemed to fit. We decided to break around 1pm and grab some lunch. When we got back to the writing room we looked at the second verse that still needed a last line.

“The weight of the world, the need to survive

Has made you believe that you’ve got no right

When out of the blue you meet someone

XXXXXXXXX”

We tried everything we could think of and were about to call it a day, when a bird landed on the window sill and starting sunning itself. The next line flew out of Tony’s lips but we were all thinking it….

“The weight of the world, the need to survive

Has made you believe that you’ve got no right

When out of the blue you meet someone

Who offers a place as warm as the sun”

Sometimes when we get stuck and are banging our head on the wall, we can step back and remove ourselves from the song. And just soak in the moment. The sites and sounds. Try it next time you get a block on a line. It’s amazing the miracles that can happen when we let go and write in the moment.

“Second Chance” never made it into that TV show, but was later recorded by several major recording artist. If you’d like to hear the Trisha Yearwood recording of the song along with my own acoustic guitar version, just click below.

Write On! ~Clay

Trisha Yearwood’s Record Version:

Clay’s Original Acoustic Version: