So true, that part. Writing for others is a mix of inspiration and damned hard work, and requires a strange combination of humility (listening to others), and enough bravado to follow your muse. Started this time last year with 8 songs. Cut back to 4. Wrote another 12. Cut back to 9. Sent demos of 9 songs to musos/engineers whose opinions matter to me. Cut down to 3 songs. (Which have all been re-recorded/arranged) Recorded another 10 songs. Keeping critiques of aforementioned friends in mind - back to 9 songs. Wrote another 5. Played and played and played those tracks to many people, noting what seemed to please and what didn´t. Down to 7 songs, in the process of writing one last piece, then call it a day and unleash my crap on the world. So that will be 35 odd full-recordings, many rerecordings and rearrangements to produce 8 tracks. That of course doesn´t include all the stuff I wrote and forgot about, or pieces that just don´t fit. Now that doesn't mean that the other pieces are necessarily "crap" - wrote a lovely Ben Fold's Five-style ballad for my gf - but she's the only one that will hear that. I believe, that after 35 years composing, 7 albums and thousands of performances with various long-haired groups that shall go unnamed, that only experience can really tell you if it's personal or public. And most of what I released when young should have never been let out of the rehearsal studio. (thus "unnamed groups") I remember Peter Gabriel saying something similar, but I can't find the interview in question. He was far more eloquent, though. - shane