I would worry if I wasn't coming up with ideas, if I wasn't inspired.

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

I started writing more with my voice in mind.

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.

Sometimes I dream song ideas. I write a song in my dream, the melody and everything. But then sometimes I can't remember them. I think later on, I probably do.

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.

I'm always writing ideas down and then I stick em in my pocket and put em in that folder so I don't lose them. Like, somebody might say something, and I'll go, oh that's a good line, and that goes in the folder, too. It's kind of an ongoing process for me.