From the website, <a href="http://www.writersonprocess.com/2010/09/grace-potter.html">Writers on Process</a>

<blockquote><strong>Talk to me about your writing process.</strong>

There are two pieces to my writing.  One piece is the birth of a lyrical idea without a melody on it, and that tends to go into my notebook straight away.  Unfortunately, my iPhone is now my notebook, which I feel terrible about because I don’t like the idea of digitizing concepts. So I have my notebook on my iPhone, with all these weird one liners.  It’s not a whole song or a full piece, just concepts or streams of words that I like putting together.

Then there’s the music side of it.  That’s usually more productive, and rarely do I ever go back to my notebook to refer to the ideas that I have.  I build a beat on Garage Band or find a melody on the piano, and I’ll basically write a song—or at least the verse of a song—to start with.  Then maybe I’ll find some lyrics to go with it, but usually I like to find the chords for the chorus before I even start thinking about the lyrics.  And that’s just on this most recent record.  Every record is different, and I don’t have a formula, but I do spend a lot of time building beats because I need musical inspiration to come up with the right idea lyrically. </blockquote>


