I just tried to come up with some honest songs. What I was writing about was real plain stuff that I wasn't sure was going to be interesting to other people. But I guess it was...I've never had any discipline whatsoever. I just wait on a song like I was waiting for lightning to strike. And eventually-usually sometime around 3 in the morning-I'll have a good idea. By the time the sun comes up, hopefully, I'll have a decent song.
Creativity only resonates if you infuse real life into the work.
The most fun thing about being a writer is that everything is interesting.
Anyone can see that to write Uncle Tom's Cabin on the knee in the kitchen, with constant calls to cooking and other details of housework to punctuate the paragraphs, was a more difficult achievement than to write it at leisure in a quiet room.
You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.
The inspiration can come in such small ways that if you sit there just waiting for the big epiphany you'll sit there for the rest of your life.
Since I was a kid, I could make up stories, I could make up funny jokes and I could always do it. When I'm walking down the street or having dinner, ideas will hit me, and I write them down on matchbooks or napkins and throw them in the draw.
