I don't write down my experiences, but I have a very decent memory. I have tons of books in which I write down phrases as they occur to me. That's how I write songs. I'll need a line and I'll go through the books and find it, the right rhyme and everything.
“In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.”
“Elizabeth Barrett Browning could write a poem two pages long. Could she have brought it to a music publisher?”