I'm a musician first, not a lyricist. I only spend two months out of every two years writing lyrics and the rest of the time I'm a drummer. Being a drummer helps me because words are a subdivision of time.  Being fairly adventurous rhythmically as a drummer, I'm driven that way lyrically. I like to stretch lines and play with phrasing. I have a good sense of the music of words and the poetry of words and what makes a nice sounding and even a nice looking word. I find that the more layers a word or a series of words offers to me, the more satisfied I am. So if I can get a series of words that are rhythmically interesting and maybe have some kind of internal rhyming and rhythmic relationship, plus at least two layers of interpretive ideas in there too, the more pleased I am. I love to sneak in little bits of alliteration--even if it would never be recognized. It is recognized.

I do like to get away with unusual words, but there are limits. There are some words that can sound good and look good and feel right in the context of a piece of verse, but when I go over them with Geddy, he'll complain to me that I've gone overboard. There are certain vowel consonant combinations that are very difficult to deliver because you have to think so much about the elocution of those syllables that you can't possibly deliver them with the necessary emotions. The first time I hear words sung is really when they come alive for me. When they're written on a piece of paper it can be satisfying technically, but whether they work or not really happens when I hear Geddy sing them for the first time.

Writing lyrics is a tremendously demanding form of discipline; it requires precision. I don't like lyrics that are just thrown together, that were obviously written as you went along, or the song was already written and the guy made up the lyrics in five minutes. I can tell. Craftsmanship speaks. I'm not happy with spontaneity musically either. I think you take such a chance. It's the same with those ideas you wake up with in the middle of the night. Sometimes you write them down and you wake up in the morning and you go, What? And you rip it up and throw it away. Other times you save it. We do have improvisational periods during sound checks and we record them and at the end of the tour we sift through them and look for anything that happened that was magic. And there are ideas that we can mine out of that, taking advantage of the spontaneity of one day's mood. But to go on stage and expect people to indulge you; that doesn't work. I prefer organization.

I think the joy of creation is very overrated. The irony of it is that the moment goes by so fast. When I'm working on a piece and I have the theme of it going and I'm working away, there is that moment when I realize, yes, this is going to work. But then I'm gone. I'm gone into making it work. And then the knots in the brain start to become untied. I'm figuring out, OK, this line goes to that line, this verse to that verse. You can't just sit back and feel fulfilled by it. To me the most satisfying time of making an album is the writing period. We listen to a demo, and yes, this is exciting, and it's what we wanted it to be and it gets you off. That is the ultimate return that you will get from that song. And then you'll spend another six months recording the basic tracks, doing the overdubs, doing the vocals, doing the mixing. At the end of it all, there's no joy of creation, there's no sitting back going, This is finished and wow, I'm so happy. Because you're so tired and drained from all of the mental demands you don't have anything left to throw a party.

In the demo period the rewards are instantaneous. But by the end of an album it's impossible to judge which songs will truly be popular and which won't. We're inevitably surprised. And then there are songs like "Vital Signs" from our Moving Pictures album. That song has a marriage of vocals and lyrics I'm very happy with. But it took our audience a long time to get it, because it was rhythmically very different for us and it demanded the audience to respond to it in a different rhythmic way. There was no heavy downbeat. It was all counterpoint between upbeat and downbeat and there was some reflection of reggae influence and a reflection of the more refined areas of new wave music that we had taken under our umbrella and made happen. That song took about three tours to catch on. It was kind of a baby for us. We kept playing it and wouldn't give up. We put it in our encore one tour--putting it in the most exciting part of the set possible. We just demanded that people accept it because we believed in it. I still think that song represents a culmination--the best combination of music, lyrics, and rhythm. It opens up so many musical approaches, from being very simplistic and minimal to becoming very overplayed. Everything we wanted in the song is there. So that song was very special to us. But we had to wait. We had to be patient and wait for the audience to understand us.

This essay and 113 others can be found in Bruce Pollock's latest book, "Working Musicians: Defining Moments from the Road, the Studio and the Stage." To find out more about the book and the people in it, or to order the book, go toworkingmusiciansbook.com. A veteran journalist, lyricist, novelist, humorist, essayist, columnist, editor, music historian, and record producer, Bruce Pollock is the author of eight books on music, including Working Musicians, The Rock Song Index, Hipper Than Our Kids, and In Their Own Words, as well as three novels. Bruce is currently a record producer in NYC and working on his 12th book.