Be prolific. Accept every thought. Mythologize yourself. Show up.

You know *No Children*. Maybe you know *This Year*. Those two songs, the bitter divorce anthem and the defiant survival hymn, have soundtracked countless breakups and breakthroughs, racked up millions of streams, and cemented the Mountain Goats in the indie rock canon.

But most casual fans don’t realize those two songs are drops in an ocean of over 600 songs that John Darnielle (primary and originally sole member of the band) has written across three decades. Six hundred songs. Three National Book Award-nominated novels. Countless tours, collaborations, and creative experiments. Darnielle has been building one of the most staggering bodies of work in contemporary music and literature, and not through genius or inspiration or perfect conditions, but through a straightforward-yet-radical method.

If you’re an aspiring writer paralyzed by perfectionism, waiting for the right tools or the right moment or the right idea, then this essay is your intervention. Want to be a good writer? Write like John Darnielle. Write like the Mountain Goats.

John Darnielle began his songwriting career decades ago, when he was [working as a psychiatric nurse](https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-slow-climb-how-the-mountain-goats-john-darnielle-became-the-best-storyteller-in-rock-625/) at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, California. The facility specialized in Spanish-speaking patients, and Darnielle worked in employee housing for $200 a month, passing medications and teaching patients how to manage assaultive behavior. John has been open about his past, about how he [overdosed on heroin after being in the throes of addiction](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/348736199), waking up handcuffed to a hospital bed, which was an experience that catalyzed changing his life for the better.

It was during this period, living in that bare employee housing, that Darnielle bought a cheap guitar and started writing songs, [recording them on a Panasonic RX-FT500 boombox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Darnielle) he could barely afford at Circuit City. As he put it, “*There were better ones, but I only had $110. I didn’t have $130.*”

John has written over 600 songs. How is this done? By not being pretty about the process. By scribbling with fervor in a dollar-store coiled notebook instead of delicately being careful with your writing. By embracing what Darnielle calls the [demystification of the creative process](https://www.songwritersonprocess.com/blog/2017/5/15/john-darnielle-the-mountain-goats),. Treating writing as labour, not mystique.

Darnielle’s early recording setup with the Panasonic boombox with its audible *hiss* and mechanical wheel-grind became foundational to understanding his method. The machine’s limitations were collaborators instead of obstacles