Originally Posted by B.D.Thomas
With a text editor and unlimited undo, you only see the final result.
An excellent point that really bothered me initially when I made the switch to text editor from paper. But I quickly figured out a solution to that problem that really works for me!

Every song I write starts with an idea or a prompt so I type them into my text editor and then scroll those a bit down the page. Then I type a bunch of keywords that might work in my song along with rhyming words and scroll those a bit down the page.. Next comes my first draft and, unless it is perfect (it never is), I scroll it down, copy/paste it above and start working on draft 2. Each time, before I make a significant change, I copy/paste the set of lyrics below my workspace and then work on the new draft.

For me, this is an ideal technique because I can type faster and more legible plus I never lose my changes and previous drafts. Text files are small so they don't take up much space. And I have a full chronology of each song's history with way more detail than I could ever fit in the margins of a piece of paper.

There are lots of ways to improve on this. You could add date/time stamps on each revision. You could switch to a word processor and then mark up text with strikethrough, bold, etc. maybe even use features that let you hide/show sections. You could even buy songwriting software like MasterWriter. Heck, Trent Reznor, Rob Thomas and David Foster can't all be wrong!