Once I come up with the concept, the rest of the song just comes.
I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!
Usually the poems are written in one sitting. There's always a groping towards some satisfying ending. But I'd say the hardest part is not writing. Once the writing starts, it's too pleasurable to think of it as a difficulty.
I enjoy scenes in films, which do not have the pressure of the story so much... and it flows. I've tried to go in that direction.
Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I've written a whole song in an hour.
There is no formula to it. Writing every song is a little journey. The first note has to lift you.
Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.
The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day ... you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.
As so many writers know, the experience of creating an imaginary world is closer to dreaming than it is to normal, grit-your-teeth work. It's preconscious rather than conscious. Ideas fall into your head, and the book writes you, rather than the other way around.
Creativity is our true nature; blocks are an unnatural thwarting of a process at once as normal and as miraculous as the blossoming of a flower at the end of a slender green stem.
I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.
I write songs in batches and then record them and then can't write again for ages. I try and build one song upon another, they may not obviously look inter-related but often one song acts as a springboard into another.
While I am working I am not conscious of what I am putting on the canvas.
When I'm writing something, everything falls into place. When I'm not writing, stuff keeps happening to me, and there's nowhere to put it all.
The flow of Guiness into the studio was inspirational as well as nutritive.
I have a tendency sometimes to get too logical with what I'm writing, just because I want it to be kind of perfect.
I don't outline. I sit down to write, and I take the ride. If something starts to not feel right, I go back to the last place that felt like jazz to me.
Part of writing is discovering the rules of the game and then deciding whether to follow the rules or to break them. The great thing about the game of poetry is that it's always your turn - I guess that goes back to my being an only child. So once it's under way, there is a sense of flow.
It's hard to describe my style. People will tell me that I'm really flowy.
When I write a story, it's not like I'm thinking about what I'm doing
I'm very happy for others to engage in conjecture, but if I was ever conscious of what I'm thinking about when I'm writing, oh my God, I'd be totally lost.
Lots of artists who paint have the experience to one degree or another... where their thinking doesn't precede their doing... It's a funny thing, what I really hate yet I have to go through with it, is the preparation.
You can't force music; It just has to come to you.
The best poems come from the world, go through the poet, and go back in to the world.
At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar.
