Every artist talks about the creative process as a journey, and ofen as a struggle. For singer-songwriter Sarah Jaffe, those are anything but empty words.

"There will just be spurts of periods of time—longer sometimes— where I have trouble writing and finding inspiration,” Jaffe says. “When I was in high school there was such a newness [about writing music]. There was something that was just not very familiar. I think now it can be sometimes too familiar to sit down with a guitar and try to write.”