How come I can only write song "fragments"?

Question

Hey, I recently got into song writing! I have this really annoying problem, though. I'll write all of my thoughts down on my paper (trying to be poetic and clever), take one stanza I really like (it's an absolute hurricane of thoughts on this paper, so I'll try to mesh what I can together to extract one pure stanza that I really like). I'll pick up my guitar, find some chords I like, sing random notes in the key over them, and in this entire process I get incredibly excited and lose the feeling I had when I was writing my heart out. I end up with a bunch of little catchy poetic song "fragments" (and a bunch of scrap writing left over) that are pretty useless to me.

I really want to write full songs. Have any tips?

(Also, I find it hard to go with these small fragments and turn them into bigger songs because I've lost the original feeling I had and I really have nothing more to say on the topic because I feel better already :P)

Answer 1

Feelings, schmeelings!  What you have are called lyrical hooks.  From there, you have to have musical hooks, then apply discipline to complete them into verses, come up with chord progressions, make up a chorus, maybe a bridge, write three verses of lyrics, and maybe put an instrumental solo in there.  It's work.