I usually have an idea of how I want a song to sound, but I don't always know how to get there

I write first for myself as a therapeutic process, to get stuff out and to deal with it.

I started writing little short stories and poems as soon as I learned to read and write. I think I was six years old. And then when I got to be eleven, twelve, and into my teens, I was just listening to records all the time, and I got a guitar. I started to take guitar lessons when I was twelve.

I grew up around poets and novelists and my dad wrote poems about everything - from a cat sleeping in a window to a car wreck he passed on the highway. I learned not to censor myself: that was one of things I learned in my apprenticeship, my creative-writing apprenticeship with my dad.

As it turns out, now is the moment you've been waiting for

It's easier to write songs when you're single.

I'm an artist first and foremost. So things are gonna go up and down and sideways and whichever way all through life.