My wife insists that all good songs are based on personal experience.

I would go along with that. At least to some extent, but I’d add observation and imagination to the mix. News stories, people-watching, chance remarks and throwaway lines on television can all start a train of thought that eventually becomes a song.

Quite often, at least in my case, it begins with nothing more than an interesting idea bouncing around in my head. Sometimes it is a fragment of a verse or chorus. Sometimes it is just a phrase with a melody attached.

“Can’t Go Home Tonight,” North of Elsewhere’s second single, began with a few words going round and round in my head:

Keep driving, don’t ask me why
There are things that cannot be put right.

From that little collection of words, a song gradually emerged, and became one of my favourites on the album.

I can’t claim any personal experience behind it. I am not aware of anything particularly supernatural happening at home, unless you count the sock goblins that steal one sock from every pair and then maliciously mismatch the survivors.

But the song took on a life of its own. It developed a brooding, uneasy atmosphere without ever quite explaining what has happened or why its protagonist cannot go home. If I had to identify a musical influence, songs such as Mike + The Mechanics’ “Silent Running” probably spring to mind: something ominous is happening, but you are never handed all the answers.

There is, however, an interesting theory that everything we write must spring from personal experience, or from something lurking in the deepest recesses of the subconscious.

That theory can get you into trouble.

Take “Satellite Sue,” the third track on the Not Famous Yet album. Sue is an irrepressible free spirit who lives life to the full and leaves a trail of broken hearts behind her. Not through cruelty; she is simply forever moving on and always just out of reach.

She is also a redhead.

When my wife discovered this, there followed a distinctly frosty inquiry into the identity of the mysterious redhead over whom I was apparently lusting.

There isn’t one. Sue is simply a great character with a wonderful backstory who happens to inhabit a catchy song. And that remains my official position.

Some songs undoubtedly do contain more personal experience. “Not Famous Yet,” for example, grew from years spent playing small gigs in venues that were often some distance short of sold out.

But wherever the initial idea comes from, a good song eventually begins to acquire an identity of its own. A character appears. A mood settles over it. Fragments of a story begin joining together. After a while, it can feel less like inventing something and more like discovering something that was already there. I become the scribe, trying to capture it before it disappears again.

Not every idea survives. Many end up in the bin. Others remain in my little black book, waiting patiently for a second chance.

Recently, I revisited a song I had written years ago. I had played around with it and recorded several versions, but it had never quite worked. This time, I changed the male vocal to a female one, increased the tempo and gave the guitars and bass a much more prominent role.

Suddenly, the song came alive.

It is still a work in progress, but I think it may now be a serious candidate for the next album.

And that, more or less, is how the whole thing grows. Begin with a phrase, an observation, a memory or a completely imaginary character. Find the story hidden inside it. Give it a mood and a melody and see where it wants to go.

The result is a small, self-contained and immensely satisfying creative project.

And if somebody else hears it and says, “Hey, that’s good,” then it was worth following the idea in the first place.