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If I don't have a project going, I sit down and begin to write something - a character sketch, a monologue, a description of some sight, or even just a list of ideas.

I'm a visual person, so it always starts with a picture, and then I get obsessed with the idea, sometimes too much. I have these blank books in which I take notes, and I add postcards and other physical items.

My writing often contains souvenirs of the day - a song I heard, a bird I saw - which I then put into the novel.

I'm always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment.

It's not like what I do, how I write, changes depending on the nature of the project. I give each story my all, regardless of if there are a few thousand people reading it or a few hundred thousand.

I'm always writing something. I've got so much stuff, I don't know what to do with it. Some of it will be Strokes, some of it will be I don't know what - stuff for pop singers. TV themes. I've got a jar stuffed with songs, all these ideas that are just me humming into a recording device.

I pretty much only write by default, because I want to make certain projects so instead of trying to wait and find them, I create them, but I'm not really a writer.

I'm writing constantly about all my crazy experiences across the world, so I have a lot of music I've already written.

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.