How should you keep lyric drafts?
Save versions, never overwrite one document. Lyric writing is subtractive — you cut the line that was too much, the verse that explained too well — and a single evolving file destroys precisely the material you will want back. Keeping each draft whole costs nothing and means every earlier reading of the song is still there to be compared.
Why
A lyric is not a document being improved; it is a series of attempts at the same feeling. Keeping only the latest attempt assumes the newest is the best, and any writer who has restored a cut line from memory at two in the morning knows that assumption is false often enough to be expensive.
What it does
- Keep each draft as its own version, in order, oldest to newest.
- Write the new draft rather than editing the old one in place.
- Read two versions side by side before deciding which line survives.
- Photograph the paper draft too, crossings-out and all — the marks are part of the record.
What it deliberately does not
- One note that you keep editing.
- Deleting a verse because the song is 'too long' before you know what it is.
- Retyping a page of handwriting instead of keeping the page.
- Trusting an app that silently syncs the newest text over everything else.
What that leaves behind
the door song
- I never learned to say the thing
so I stood there like a fool- so I sang it at the door
- Versions
- 6, newest at the top
- From the page
- photographed, transcribed
- Struck text
- kept, not cleaned up
Related questions
How many versions is too many?
There is no such number. Versions are cheap text; the expensive thing is the line you cannot get back.
Should the newest version be the one on top?
Yes — you are almost always looking for where the song is now, and reaching backwards deliberately when you are not.
Read next
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How do you finish a song you started months ago?
Go back to the earliest take before you edit anything.
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How do you organise song ideas?
Give every song one place and make putting something in it take one tap.
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Can you transcribe handwritten lyrics with your phone?
Yes, but ordinary text recognition is the wrong tool: it is built for printed receipts and fails on cursive, on crossings-out and on a page written at an angle in a hurry.