f you've read anything by Sheila Davis its no secret she's an excellent communicator that knows the craft of songwriting. So its no surprise she's produced a songwriting course workbook that shares her insights into the nuances of lyric writing in a way that should help songwriters develop consistency, add richness and depth, and bring clarity to their lyrics.
The practical workbook style provides both numerous theories, concepts, and principles for popular songwriting forms, and plenty of exercises to help you immediately apply yourself. And although I'm not the type inclined to work through the exercises using someone else's material, I did find the lyric analysis of student songs helpful in identifying pitfalls and weaknesses, and in providing ideas on how to correct them.
I also found the" whole brain" section interesting and helpful as regards understanding what type of writer I am. And I often employ the recommended right-brain clustering technique at the start of a new song to develop a word pallet that generally leads to stronger imagery and greater thematic consistency.
When I started writing songs, The Craft of Lyric Writing and Successful Lyric Writing were two of the first books I picked up. The former was helpful in gaining a solid overview of popular songwriting techniques, and the latter, for tweaking lyrics and correcting problems. One minor shortcoming I found with Successful Lyric Writing is that some of the examples and song references seemed a bit dated and out of touch. So much so that even Lennon/McCartney are overlooked.
New and intermediate level songwriters helped by the workbook format should benefit from this book.