After reading the packet about John Hiatt I gleaned some very important motifs of his life and songwriters in general.  Just one paragraph into the reading and I already had an excellent feel for John's personality and mentality towards songwriting.  "I like the way it flows when it flows. I like the way I don't have to force it.  I lie the way I don't get nervous if II haven't written a song in a month or two."  This quote put the image of a lackadaisical stream meandering through life in my mind.  That is the way I see John Hiatt, he goes with the flow and never tries to force it.  This transfers to songwriting as well, John just goes through life leisurely but when inspiration hits he works it into a tangible song before returning to his lethargic stream of conscious. 

     John also says, "I don't believe in too much rehearsal."  This would seem odd for a musician considering the anti-thesis of this "practice makes perfect" also applies to musicians, but John Hiatt is a songwriter.  His idea makes a lot of sense for one too, because when we hear a song for the first time, we set an opinion about it.  After that, any time we hear it we revert to our opinion from the first time and do not appreciate it in a different way.  By listening to a song few times and far between John can maintain his open-mindedness and unbias towards the song and is therefore able to edit it easily as well as looking at it from different perspectives, like a peer editing your paper.  It is this quality that allows so many people to duplicate John's song, because they hear it from different perspectives and can adapt it to fit that.