If by the second or third day I’m stuck and it’s not working, I usually will scrap it. I find an open tuning and start picking around until I find a melody or something I like. I follow that melody to the end of the song. I have to be willing to scrap the entire thing and move on because I can’t waste a lot of time. Everyone has a different approach with writing, this long excursion, excavating out of the ground, like you’re digging and finding it can be this long process. For me it’s more like following a bird. If it flies away too quickly, it just wasn’t meant to be.

There’s a good amount of momentum between projects. I worked in design for 10 years, so I don’t have time for writer’s block. I don’t have time for creative blocks. That’s my perspective on everything. When you’re working with a client and it’s not necessarily for yourself and it’s about a timeline, it’s about deadlines, and it’s a very structured process and you’ve followed that—especially if you’ve been let go at certain jobs because you didn’t follow that—you just kind of get over yourself. But, I dunno. And that’s maybe not the greatest thing to say, but I think that’s a responsibility to have, man. Just making sure that you’re not out of it all the time. Making sure that you can actually deliver.

I don’t get stuck creatively. I was built to use and know my body—to trust its limits, only in that they can be broken. My mind works like an athlete’s mind and body. I’m an ox on the page, yoked to some aching heaviness, grinding some mark of myself into the clay. If I’m ever frustrated or angry or bored, I use my body. To walk, to run, to make love, to touch.

When you’re creatively stuck, there’s something else that’s stuck. There’s something else that’s stagnant that needs to start moving so that your creativity can flow again. Maybe you’re holding it in an emotion. Maybe you need to have a conversation that you haven’t had and you’re putting it off. Whatever it is, your creative energy gets affected by other things in your life. Your creative energy is your life force.