How do you write?

I'll be back with one or is that two more Caribana related posts but I don't feel like writing about that now. So here is a question to all of my fellow bloggers who read this. How do you write?

Do you have to be relaxed to write, must there be burning issues for you to write about, where does your creative spark come from? Do you write at a certain spot, listen to music as you write, light candles, drink alcohol, smoke illegal substances? What drives you?

I'm just wondering because I was doing some exercises a few weeks back at a gathering which were supposed to get you relaxed so that you could be creative and write and for me it was an abject failure. Why? Cause I don't relax before I write, its more like the opposite I write to relax. I kind of follow that old Chuck D line from Terrordome 'When I get mad I put it down on a pad'. Like even if I'm not upset I'm still a bit tense and I have these things I need to say and as they come seeping out of my brain onto the written page then I can feel more comfortable and just sort of chill. This is especially true of my poetry. Writing for me is an outlet. If I relax before I start typing then nothing really happens because I'm likely to just be like let me go watch TV or chat online or something.

And I can pretty much write anywhere but I prefer no music, no outside stimuli to affect what I'm doing. Just ambient noises and I don't like people trying to have conversations with me when I'm trying to sort out something I'm writing which is probably why most of my blogs and other stuff are written when my wife isn't around.

So yea the relaxation business naa work fa de I. I'm just too tense and stressed out an individual to really relax first before writing I guess. I work from a position of must say what I got to say, even if its not really that important or useful, must work franticly under self imposed deadlines. Must just get thoughts out of head onto paper.

So how do you approach writing?