Well, I will venture to wade in with a few comments:

Songwriting and then public review of the songs can feel alot more 'naked' than simply playing others' music. It can be kind of uncomfortable until you get used to it.

I hear myself and my lyrics when I read through yours. Some of what I have learned from putting up songs/lyrics amongst some other writers that I respect are that my lyrics always try to cram too many syllables into a line. I see that in some of these lines, but it is hard to judge this without the rhythm and meter with which they will be delivered. As one of my co-workers states regarding when I submit copy that has to get boiled down into marketing materials: "Never miss an opportunity to delete words when words aren't needed". He's a photographer and a good one at that.

With that said, there are a couple of lines where it seems like 'filler' words were added and could be removed. For example:

"But the look in your eyes told me words just weren’t needed today" the word 'just' seems extra. Same thing in this line: 'But everything in me just told me to beg you to stay, please stay'.

"Then I saw you that day from far down the hall", consider removing 'Then'. Also consider deleting 'from', using a pause instead.

"As you silently gathered my clothes", 'as' could easily be removed, giving a little more drama to the pair of lines. I did this, you did that.

Finally, you use the word 'But' many times to open up lines of verse. I read through where I skipped that word, and I can't count one instance where the word was necessary to communicate the message of the line.

Also, I agree with most of the above comments, and I strongly encourage you to do what Kemmrich suggested and if possible find a local songwriting group to join - where you can see people's faces as they talk about your songs/lyrics. It's much better to do this live than via asynchronous communication like in this forum.

I will invite you to the February Album Writing Month challenge at www.fawm.org, where there's a global community of like-minded songwriters (mostly amateurs) doing something just slightly insane - writing 14 songs in the month of February. There's a great spirit of community as we all write profusely, with the goal of sheer quantity pulling some brilliant moments out of each of us along the way. There's a very active forum that goes along with the insanity where you can get all the lyric critique you can handle in such a short time, where the average time you have to write a song is 2 days. It's a great thing to make the dismal month of February (at least in the northern hemisphere) pass by very quickly.

Keep writing. Writing lyrics takes practice like learning an instrument. You are honing a skill. There's no right or wrong way, but find the way that is enjoyable to you.

-Scott

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