Jewel on mixing media, 2001

I really like writing and drawing, and I get bored doing one thing too long. It’s sort of like if you are a farmer and you plant the same crop every year, it depletes the soil, but if you rotate crops it puts nutrients back in the soil, so when you go back to the same crop, it makes it stronger. For me, writing is like that. If I switch from songwriting to poetry, my songwriting gets better in my absence. Whereas if I do it all the time, it just burns me out. I don’t get any new information that makes my songwriting better. Sometimes just doing visual art, concentrating on pure shapes for the sake of shapes, makes my melody writing better. It makes my phrasing stronger.

From the book The Complete Singer-Songwriter: A Troubadour's Guide to Writing, Performing, Recording, and Business