What I stopped doing so I could create

There's a lot of talk about creative people's routines. What time they get up, what they have for breakfast, how many pages they write before lunch. My impression is that my work has changed more because of what I've stopped doing than because of what I do. It's a less photogenic list. Nobody shows off on social media all the things they've dropped along the way. But if someone asked me how you get to 273 singles and well over 280 music videos in two years, I'd talk about giving things up before I talked about discipline.

The first thing I stopped doing was waiting until I felt like it. For a long time I believed, like almost everyone, that writing depended on a special mood, a kind of visitor who turned up whenever it pleased. If it didn't turn up, I didn't write. With that system I'd have finished three songs, and probably sad ones. Now I sit down to write even when I don't fancy it, and I discover, with some irritation, that the lyrics come out anyway. Sometimes worse, sometimes better. The difference between an inspired day and an ordinary one is much smaller than I'd have liked to believe.

I also stopped polishing for ever. I used to go back to a lyric again and again, changing a word, putting it back, changing it once more. That wasn't editing. That was fear with good manners. These days I give each song the time it needs, not the time my insecurity would demand. When a lyric says what it has to say and sounds the way it has to sound, I let it go. If in a while it looks like it could be better, I'll write another one. That's exactly why the catalogue is so long.

I stopped checking the numbers all the time. That one cost me more than I expected, because the platforms are designed to make you look. Every visit, every play, every comment comes with its own little chemical reward. The trouble is that when you spend the day fretting over how your released work is doing, you've got no headspace left for what doesn't exist yet. Now I check every so often, the way you'd check the letterbox, and the rest of the time I try to care more about the song in my hands than about last week's.

I stopped asking for permission. Not from anyone in particular, but from a sort of imaginary tribunal that always had some objection. That a title was too long, that a song about an ice-cream-cone diet wasn't serious enough, that camp humour would look frivolous, that making music with artificial intelligence would cost me credibility. That tribunal doesn't pay my bills and doesn't listen to my songs. I fired it. It still sends the occasional letter, but I no longer rush to open them.

I stopped trying to make every song say everything. At first I wanted each lyric to be the final word on its subject, for a song about an ex-boyfriend to have the last word on ex-boyfriends. That makes lyrics heavy and it paralyses you, because nothing ever measures up. Now I think a song can be small, can tell one detail, one afternoon, one quirk, and the whole body of work will take care of saying the big things. That's what a trilogy like GAYFOLK is for: it works as a story in three parts and lets each song do just its own bit.

I stopped keeping the serious and the funny quite so far apart. For a while I had two mental drawers: songs for laughing and songs for real. It was a false division that made me pick a tone before I knew what I wanted to say. Now I let a lyric start as a joke and end up somewhere else, or let a sadness keep a joke inside it. Copla always did that, and so did queer pop. It took me a while to realise I could do it without apologising.

I stopped waiting for someone to give me structure. There's no record company behind me except my own, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS, which is a one-person label. For a while that felt like something missing, as if I lacked someone to set me deadlines, to tell me what to release and when. Now I see it differently. Nobody's going to come and organise me, so I organise myself. I do it imperfectly, with my quirks, but I do it. The new website, with its search box, its A-to-Z of lyrics and a page for every song, is also a way of getting myself in order.

I stopped explaining so much. There was a time when every release came with an urge to justify it: why this song, why this title, why this way. Long explanations are usually a way of asking for approval in advance. Now I say just enough. I explain how I work, I say clearly that I write all the lyrics and produce the music with artificial intelligence, that I direct and choose, and I let the songs do the rest. If anyone wants to know more, that's what the blog is for.

Some of these give-ups are still a work in progress. I still compare myself with others more than is good for me. I still have doubts about some songs the day before they come out. I still go through phases of reorganising folders instead of writing, which is a very elegant way of doing nothing at all. I don't beat myself up about it. Stopping something is a process with relapses, like giving up sugar or giving up answering an ex at silly o'clock.

The funny thing is that none of these give-ups has taken away anything I miss. Not the waiting for inspiration, not the endless polishing, not the imaginary tribunal. They've left me more time and a lighter step. I'd love to say I planned it that way, but it would be a lie. I let things go because they were weighing me down, and in letting them go I found I could walk faster.

I don't know what I'll give up next. I suspect it has to do with needing everything to be neatly in order, and I don't expect it to be easy.

Everything that came out of giving all this up is at mikesaintlouis.com.