Check out Pull Tiger Tail's tips on writing song lyrics:

- Do you have an interesting daily life? Why not write about it, but substitute yourself for a dragon, your bathroom for outer space and water for fire. You'll soon find that actually, something as mundane as brushing your teeth becomes a challenging experience worth writing about.

- Lots of songs have too many lyrics (and some far too few). It's hard to know where to draw the line, but it's generally accepted that if you cram your chorus with the same word over and over it'll get stuck in people's heads. Especially if it's a word like 'snagglepuss' or 'jabberwocky'. Other acceptable options are 'love', 'you', 'la-la-la-la', and 'animator'.

- Why not try a library? The librarians will have all sorts of helpful hints, like "No singing in the library", and "What do I look like, a thesaurus?". They don't mean it, and they're there to help you.

- There are several kinds of songs: appeals (please come back to me!), stories (they wouldn't come back to me!), statements (i don't care if they don't come back to me). Don't worry too much about this, because ultimately they're all the same song

- Often, inspiration runs dry. If so, why not try reading the instructions on the back of everyday objects? Tooth-floss, milk cartons, that kind of thing.

- Please, whatever you do, don't nick lyrics wholesale from books. By all means read all you can and vacuum inpiration up, but when it comes to writing your own, let all your influences fight each other to create something new. Like a blue apple.

And here is some advice from Kevin Brooks:

My Top Tips:
 
1) Song lyrics don't have to tell a story, they can simply be a feeling. Or even just the feeling of a feeling.

2) The smallest thing can often be the key to everything. A single word, an image, the look on someone's face ... sometimes that's all you need.

3) The best stuff often comes from places inside you that you don't really understand. Just let it come out.

4) The words of a song are sounds, just like any other sounds. And different sounds create different feelings. So when you're writing, imagine how the sound of a word fits in with the sound of the song.

5) Don't worry if you don't know what everything you write means. As long as it comes from the right place, you don't have to know what it means.

Find out more about the Black Rabbit Summer lyrics comp here.