The eleven-verse tractor song, and why I cut it
The first song I ever finished was about my father's tractor.
I was proud of it. I'd gotten the whole thing down, the smell of diesel, the way he'd cuss at it in front of the kids without really cussing, the year it threw a rod out in the west field. Eleven verses. I played all eleven for Jill.
She sat through the whole thing, and when it was done she said, "That's a lot of tractor."
That was the whole review. Four words.
I cut it to three verses that night. Kept the rod throwing, kept the cussing, cut everything else. It was a better song by the time I was done. Not because I added anything. Because I stopped adding.
That's the lesson this week. Most songs are twice as long as they need to be, mine included, probably yours too if you wrote something last time. Nobody has ever complained that a song was too short. I've never once heard that complaint in my life. But I hear "that's a lot of tractor" more than you'd think, just said different ways.
Why we do this in your rough draft, not your good one
You wrote something last lesson. It's rough. Good. That's what Starting Rough means.
Now the job isn't to polish it. It's to find out what it's actually about, underneath all the stuff you put in because you thought a song needed it. A verse about the weather that day. A line that rhymes but doesn't say anything. Two verses that are really the same verse wearing different clothes.
Cut those. All of them.
How to actually do it at home
Get your draft out. Read it through once, out loud, not singing, just reading like it's a letter.
Then go verse by verse and ask one question: if I cut this, does the song still make sense? Not "is this a nice line." Not "did I work hard on this." Just — does the song survive without it.
If the answer's yes, cut it. Set it aside, don't throw it away. Half your cut lines will show up again in a different song later. I keep a notebook in my truck for exactly this reason — scraps have a way of becoming the start of something else down the road.
Do this for every verse. Most people, by the end, have cut a third of what they wrote. Some cut half. That's normal. It doesn't mean the writing was bad. It means you needed all those words the first time through to find out which four lines the song was actually about.
When it's the opposite problem
Sometimes the cut isn't the verse, it's the ending, and you don't have one yet.
Nelda used to sing a washing-day song from when she was a girl, and she could never remember how it ended. Just trailed off. I spent two weeks trying to write her an ending she'd approve of. Wrote four different last lines. She turned down all four.
The fifth one, she said "that's close enough."
From Nelda, that's a standing ovation. I'll take it.
Point is, sometimes the problem with your song isn't too many words, it's that you don't have the last one yet, and that's a different kind of work than cutting. Don't force an ending just to have one. Sit with it a few days. It'll come, or somebody who knows the original will tell you when you've landed close enough.
A caution, not a big one
When you're cutting, don't cut the crooked line just because it's crooked. If there's a line that doesn't quite scan right, or a chord that's technically the "wrong" one but sounds good to your ear — leave it alone. I wrote a whole song once around a chord I liked, and it turned out later a kid at school told me I'd just played G with a finger in the wrong spot. Kept it anyway. The wrong finger stayed in the song for good reason. It sounded right, even if it wasn't "right."
Cut what's unnecessary. Don't cut what's honest just because it's imperfect. Those aren't the same thing, and mixing them up is how you end up with something smooth and empty instead of something that lasts.
Before next time
Take your draft from last week and cut it by at least a third. If you can't figure out what to cut, read it to somebody in your house and watch their face at minute two. They'll tell you, one way or another, whether it's a lot of tractor. 🙏