The writer's mind-set

"The curse of being a songwriter is that you no longer listen to music, you deconstruct it. You take it apart to see why it succeeds or fails."

So says Ellis Paul, an American singer-songwriter born 1965. His thinking is exactly the same as many writers, including myself. Whatever we read, we're wondering what we can learn about the way it was written, and how we can use those tricks in our own writing.