I love writing about the summer between high school and college. It's the last gasp of really being a teen.
I love working and writing new songs. But sometimes you need to wait, to have something in your mind, and then you can let yourself play music.
I don't think that you can write music if you don't know how to play an instrument. You have to know the basics, then you can go forward.
I don't listen to music while writing; it seems to me I'm trying to make my own kind of music, and to have anything else going on is just noisy interference.
People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me.
It's what the Pixies always said about music - they were writing songs and just trying not to be boring. That was their main motivation and it worked for them. I remember reading that and thinking that was the way to do it.
I know too many musicians that have to tour on the same 10 songs, and they burn out. They get back to their house, and they have no reason to write new music. They are music'd out.
I write my songs and just play them, so there are not a whole lot of fireworks. As long as the music comes first, it's OK to have some fireworks. But not the other way around.
There's a lot of reflection that goes on whenever I write a song - it's been a wild whirlwind last couple of years and there's a lot to talk about, and hopefully that's evident in the music.
Any of the rewards or accolades or any of that are very nice and everything but the music is what saves me. And it did. I would write my way out of any kind of depressing period.
The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.
I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you're really tired. It's my relaxing time.
Well, I think every film student goes into film school thinking they want to write and direct their own movies, and they don't realize how much goes into it, and what a process it is.
I think in the old days, films really went for the shock, with the blood and guts, but movies are getting better. The writing and directing have improved a lot, because the audience demands it.
When I started writing, there was nothing about zombies. It was all teen movies, which to me are scarier than zombies, but that's another story.
I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw during the Spoleto Festival.
I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there.
I never got into using my phone's calendar. It's easier to write in my Tiffany day planner. There's something charming about having a datebook.
I get up at 5.30am, sluice myself and have two Weetabix and some mint tea, before starting to write by 6am.
I shall try to write a poem that is about the moment but doesn't betray things that are true to me as a poet.
I write to taste life twice; to savour the flavour of sweet times gone by, or spit out the bitterness before it multiplies.
