Good stuff...
I completely agree with the above posts as I go through all these processes every day. To some degree, I do quite a lot of what's been said in equal measures.
Also, since I write and perform my work mostly alone, my perspective changes and sways a bit from day to day.
If I work on a song for hours and hours and then revisit it a couple of days later, I find my vision has changed a bit. With a set of fresh ears, a lot of things change.
I might want to change the bass line or guitar part etc.. It's a process, and with some songs I find, I want to tweak them to death to get them perfect. Only to find, that 2 days later, what I thought I liked, I'm not so sure again...
In the end, you have to make decisions, you might end up with 50 or 60 tracks of all kinds of things. After all the recording, tweaking, perfecting, re-recording all over again I usually revert to the original idea I had for the song in the first place.
Except that now it's a little more polished and re-refined. If I heard the song in my head as a whole ensemble (it happens to me a lot), like a radio in your head, complete with arrangements and all, it usually ends up very close to that.
If I started with a riff or a title or a basic idea it can end up anywhere. Sometimes a good anywhere, other times not so good. That's when I lock myself in the studio and don't come out for days... I come out looking like Tom Hanks in "Castaway", weight loss, beard and hopefully a sense of " I did what I had to do". That's when my fiance thinks I'm losing my mind. But then she listens to the song and a big smile comes over her face.
There are many approaches to delivering the final product, all viable and valuable.
It's really what works for you...but you also have to have discipline and passion with whatever method you use to see it through all the way. And hopefully, make the right decisions along the way.
