It's been years since I've written anything to completion. My latest drive is to work ideas and work them to some, however inadequate, completion. The only way I'm able to take that approach at all is by conditioning it on never letting anyone hear what I've done. It's now about the process, not the product.

I've been working on this 2 and a half minute ditty, and already I'm thinking how this could be longer, could have a guitar solo, could have more "intro" sections leading into verses. But no, I have this two and a half minute structure recorded, and that is the final structure.

Lyrics are still a struggle, but the assumption that no one will ever hear this has helped. I find myself searching, if not agonizing over, for single words that need to be right. I'll have a line, but this one word needs to be changed.

It's sort of a craft. It's not so much songwriting (i.e., that I have something to say) it's more of a subconscious process where I'm digging up words and phrases and images that only make sense or mean anything on a subconscious level.

I'll read over a finished verse and I'll have no idea what it means, it doesn't make any sense, but it's what came out. So that's what I'm trying to do, but each word has to be right. If a single word doesn't feel right, I'll embark on a search for the right word.