I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect because it's every day anyway no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems or sometimes not.
I progressed through so many different styles of music through my teen years both as a player and a vocalist particularly the jazz and pop of the early 20th Century.
It's amazing to hear as a voice matures and then starts to decline what kind of emotion is still conveyed by a really good vocalist.