If we were truly in the studio making a record, it would have been more time consuming, and certainly I would have been more involved in the writing process.

Writing anything as an expert is really poisonous to the writing process, because you lose the quality of discovery.

You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it's really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process.

My writing process is consecutive, like, 'mad scientist' crazy. It's not totally writing something that rhymes or even writing a rap necessarily. Sometimes it's just writing down stuff that I'm going through.

My actual writing process? I have to just love the beat before I even write on it. I can't force myself to write to a beat that I'm not immediately loving.

I sometimes start keeping a journal about the writing process itself. Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase. In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities.

My writing process, such as it is, consists of a lot of noodling, procrastinating, dawdling, and avoiding.

Of course having a baby derails the writing process for some time. And I will be the first to say that I have essentially no social life, because there's just nothing left after being a mom, professor, and writer. I used to be big into rock climbing. No more. A lot falls by the wayside.

I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it.

When the stories come easily and the writing process doesn't feel laboring, that's usually a good sign for me.

Since signing with Universal, I have been working closely with Gary Ross, the director, producer and screenwriter. We have spent many hours on the phone, and I've been sending him information and items that have been useful to the writing process.

I always thought the writing process for movies and TV shows was just a blueprint. The making of it was the thing.

I enjoy the writing process and producing; I enjoy seeing an idea come to fruition. I'm driven by very complex characters. You look at the pilot of 'Breaking Bad,' where there's so much depth to the character, you can't help but be invested when you watch.

The writing process, it's too mysterious to try and describe.

I really enjoy the writing process because I can do it from my house. I can create these characters and take them in the different directions that I want to take them. You have a lot of freedom as a writer.

Each song is a small universe to me. Each song has a story of its own. Each has a full life to express in order to be complete, so it often happens that the building to a big crescendo feels right in the recording or writing process.

I like the story writing process. I usually use someone who has been trained for structure to take the story that I actually want, place those elements in the right places.

For me, the writing process is the same as the reading process. I want to know what happens next.

Music helps me immeasurably in the writing process.

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I'm just like, 'Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do'.