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First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.

My compositions are, I would say, like pages ripped from a diary that I don't really want to share, but that I almost feel the need to share. It's a way for me to get things out that I can't get out in life, you know, in real regular conversation with people.

The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.

The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.

I sit down and draw from my lyric book. I sit down and start looking through it and see if there is anything that strikes me that I've written.

What I end up shooting is the situation. I shoot the composition and my subject is going to help the composition or not.

As an author, you think you know where the good parts and the bad parts are. And then you read to a group of children, and you learn when you're boring them, and you hurry through those sections to get to the parts where they're interested again. You start to get a sense of your story's rhythm and flow.

I write down portions, maybe fragments, and perhaps an imperfect view of what I'm hoping to write. Out of that, I keep trying to find exactly what I want.