Luckily enough, I finished all of those projects and they weren’t shelved in a negative way, but put there like canned goods. So I can open them up.” As for the actual art of songwriting, Ryan Adams candidly opens up about what works best for him. “I don’t try to perfect my craft, ever,” he explains. “The limitations in the way one person sees the world and their music is what makes what they create so much more interesting. Over-editing is senseless. People always tell themselves, ‘I need to edit more. I need to edit more.’ Whatever. You need to work more. “Another thing I suggest,” he continues, “is to write as much in your head as you do on the guitar or whatever your instrument might be, because there’s a lot of good in there too. Sometimes I let stuff linger in my head and just ferment up there and then when I decide to let it out, something amazing develops. Or I’ll dream up a tune and I won’t rush to write it down. I’ll keep it in my mind. Or maybe I’ll write down one idea, stick it in my wallet and pull it out later. “Also, if you get writer’s block, write about that,” he adds. “Truly! When I made Love Is Hell I had writer’s block, and there are parts of that album that are about coping with it. And you should always respect the muse. Always respect your muse, whatever it is. If there’s a place or a thing that inspires you, it’s okay to dwell on that or draw from it. You can write about the same thing 15 times, and you’re just coming at it from all different sides.” Adams also suggests that if you’re an accomplished guitar player, to try writing on bass or piano, “because the notation will be so interesting and by utilizing the secondary chords, you can push more melodies through.” He also reveals that one of his tricks when he writes a new batch of songs is to make a list of words from grocery store romance novels. “I scan the book without really reading it for clusters of word forms like, ‘And then she dropped her hat,’ Or ‘It was a dark night.’ I underline them and make a list of phrases that end up triggering me. Then I go back and try to fill in words around them to find my way back to the story I want to tell in my lyrics. And even if I haven’t gotten to my original point, I’m left with something so open; it alludes to something much grander than I originally wanted to say, which could have been something as simple as ‘I think I’m hungry’ or ‘I wonder if that girl wants me.’ “I’m not one of those people who believes there was something in the air or a song can just come to me,” Adams insists, speaking on his unique approach. “That’s really a bunch of bull. It’s really about how much time you spend on your craft. It’s okay to be spiritual and it’s very important to be spiritual about art. It is some form of manifestation. But for me, and this is what I learned from hardcore and punk rock, it is that everyone has that power—if they want to manifest art. It’s just an amount of confidence and the willingness to let yourself go. It’s really about getting access to yourself. But it isn’t that some fishermen catch more fish, it’s about wanting to spend more time on the lake, or in my case, more time getting vertical.”
