After two years of refining her skills, Toupin began writing songs of her own, drawing from her experience as a longtime poet and steadily developing the disciplined practice she follows today. “For a while now I’ve had a routine of waking up in the morning and writing like it’s my job until the afternoon,” she says. “Sometimes good things happen and sometimes not, but you just do it anyway. And it always feels like the best things happen when I can get out of the way and just put whatever comes through me down on paper, without ever thinking about it too much.”