Right on the cover, Marvin Hamlisch says that “if you want to know how to write million sellers and award-winning songs”–well, hell yes! and who would know better than Marvin Hamlisch?–“this is the book for you.” It beats me why I hadn’t thought of this before. “You’d love to share the songs in your heart,” the jacket copy says, “but when it comes to producing something noteworthy, you’re afraid you’ll only hit sour notes instead of making sweet music.” Son of a gun practically read my mind. “With talent and business smarts,” the jacket goes on, “a good songwriter can build a lucrative career.” Did I have this right? I bring the talent, the business smarts and the songs in my heart, and the “TCIGTS” will do the rest? It suddenly hit me that I wasn’t getting any younger.

But I also wasn’t born yesterday. When you’re taking career advice, you want to be sure that it’s coming from a tiptop person, so I checked out this Joel Hirschhorn, who wrote the “TCIGTS.” And bingo. I mean, he’s not exactly Marvin Hamlisch–who is?–but according to the jacket he’s won two Academy Awards for Best Song, and his songs have sold a total of 93 million recordings. I thought about that number: in other words, if I traveled a mile for every recording sold of a Joel Hirschhorn song, I’d get from here to the sun? There’s a whole page about Joel Hirschhorn on the inside of the back cover, with a picture of him sitting in a tuxedo at a grand piano, with, sure enough, two Oscar statuettes in front of him. Apparently the Oscars are the least of it. Back when he was a Brill Building songwriter, he wrote “a series of million-selling rock singles” with someone named Al Kasha, whose name didn’t ring a bell. (It may actually be some secret music-industry in-joke, having to do with “cash”–Snoop Doggy Dogg is not a real name either.) At any rate, the list of these songs probably got cut from the book to make room for more tips. But we do know that he wrote “The Morning After” from “The Poseidon Adventure”–remember? This was the song that really put Maureen McGovern on the map–and “We May Never Love Like This Again” from “The Towering Inferno.” He also wrote a song called “I’d Like to Be You For a Day,” identified as “the title tune from the Jodie Foster film ‘Freaky Friday’.”

Now see, if this had been me–and I wish it had–I would’ve just called the title tune “Freaky Friday” and thought that was good enough. But Hirschhorn is big on rewriting. He’s got a whole chapter about it in which he gives such tips as “overcome your resistance to rewriting by remembering that it can make you a better songwriter,” and “don’t let disappointing results keep you from finding creative solutions” and “look upon rewriting as a pleasure, not a chore.” I knew a little about rewriting from having built a lucrative career in the content-providing industry–in fact, the very sentence you’re reading now used to be different–and I had to admit that many of my creative solutions had come when I’d refused to let disappointing results keep me from finding them.

Here’s a true story that happened to Hirschhorn. He’d showed a song to a “Disney executive,” who told him, “I can’t stand when a writer uses so many major sevenths.” So Hirschhorn rewrote the song–though he kept the major sevenths. “Someone else may love major sevenths,” he reasoned. Hirschhorn doesn’t make it clear whether the Disney executive didn’t notice that his input had been ignored, or if the rewrite eventually found a sympathetic ear with some other executive who was a sucker for a major seventh. But it almost doesn’t matter: according to Hirschhorn, all this song needed was a little elbow grease. I’ll let him tell the rest of the story. “I created an entirely new bridge and ending. The rewritten song was recorded by Maureen McGovern and put into a television show.” Wow, point taken. Criticism, Hirschhorn notes, is tough to accept. But, he goes on to say, “I need the truth so I can improve my work and win world acceptance for my songs.”

Before you can rewrite, though, you need to have something written. Where do you find inspiration? Just look around you, Hirschhorn says. “All people are colorful and unique,” he writes. “Any beach in California will produce Brian Wilson’s ‘Surfer Girl’…. And every high-school student has met or observed Dion’s ‘Runaround Sue’.” And if this ubiquitous uniqueness starts to get old–too much of a good thing, you might say–just look within. “R. Kelly, who had a hit with ‘I Believe I Can Fly,’ expressed his unrequited love for a girl through ‘Bump and Grind’.” This example bothered me a little. Was “Bump and Grind” not a hit, too? If so, why not say so? If not, why encourage aspiring songwriters to put their own unrequited love out there for public consumption? But I basically got the idea: successful songs, as Hirschhorn says, “tap into the emotions that everyone feels.” In her forword, Maureen McGovern says that “some 28 years later, I still receive letters telling me how ‘The Morning After’ has changed or saved their lives or has seen them through difficult times with its life-affirming message.” Yikes, I thought: in 28 years I’ll be 81, and damn lucky if I’ve still got a life to affirm.

I decided to get cracking, and turned straight to Chapter 8, “Cooking Up Your Hit Ingredients,” with this drawing of a popeyed guy in a chef’s hat using a guitar neck to stir a pot from which eighth notes issue like steam. (Cute idea.) This chapter told me to “learn the basic rhyme schemes used by the pros,” and that “lyrics have to sound like honest, colloquial human speech.” No biggie–see? Went to the next chapter, about hooks, which emphasizes the importance of repetition: “Yes, Bob Dylan’s ‘Rainy Day Women #12 Plus 35’ never even gives us the title in the song, but most of Dylan’s hit singles are repetitive and instantly memorable: ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ ‘I Want You,’ and ‘Mr. Tambourine Man.’” Got it, sort of. On to “The Secrets of Hit Melody Writing,” which turned out to be mostly about chord progressions–the more “interesting” the better–and rhythms, though it does point out the octave leaps in “When You Wish Upon a Star.” Then to the chapter on R&B and rap–a lot of money in that stuff, brother–which explains that they’re “dance phenomena,” that “gospel tunes became hits when ‘Lord’ was changed to ‘baby’,” and that “R&B and rap is music of passion.” I took the guitar out of the closet.

And this is all I’m going to say. Keep an eye on the pop charts for the next couple of years (they put the songwriter’s name in parentheses after the title) and you’ll see whether or not this worked our for me. Meanwhile, I’m taking another bit of Hirschhorn’s advice and listening to “Grammy winners and nominees in all genres” in order to “keep on top of the market and gain a broad overview.” Hirschhorn thinks a Grammy can make a hell of a difference–he claims that if you win one, your sales go up. “Bob Dylan’s album, ‘Time Out of Mind,’ shot from 122 to 27 on the charts after it won a Grammy award in 1997.” Think of it. But if I can’t go that route right away–and I notice Hirschhorn himself doesn’t boast of any Grammys–there’s always the Web, which, according to Hirschhorn, “has hundreds of music-oriented sites.” Who knew? Turns out I can use the Internet to promote my songs, and even get in touch with “No. 1 producers or CEOs of major corporations.” After a while on the Net, he says, “you’ll begin to feel that everyone is one large family, and most of them can be contacted.”

So consider this my first career move. You CEOs and No. 1 producers–I know you’re somewhere out there reading this–remember the name David Gates. Not the guy from Bread. Some other guy. I think you’ll be hearing it again. “Writing hits,” Hirschhorn says, “is amazingly easy if you keep an open mind.” Doesn’t the very act of writing this piece cry out that I do? With my songs in my heart and Hirschhorn as my mentor, I already feel like it’s the morning after.