Taylor Swift ‘Incredibly Stressed’ About Songwriting

Taylor Swift finds that her mood these days is directly in proportion to the amount of songwriting she's able to do at any given time. The country sensation says she's happiest when she's just penned a song, and finds if she goes too long without expressing herself, trouble begins to brew.

"There is a stressful and joyful element to making an album," Taylor tells EW.com. "I'm either incredibly stressed or overjoyed, and the way that usually goes is that if I've just written a song, I'm the happiest you will ever see me. But if I haven't written a song in a week and a half, I am more stressed than you will ever, ever see me at any other point. If I haven't written a song in more than about nine days, that's when I start to zone out in the middle of conversations because I'm thinking about what I could be writing about next. It's such a fun challenge to constantly be writing and constantly be trying to top what you just wrote. It's one of my favorite games to play -- trying to beat what I've written last."

Taylor confronts her fear of falling in love in her new single, 'Mine,' which was leaked weeks before its planned release. The 20-year-old admits she hasn't had too many good examples of love to help alleviate her fears.

"My tendency is to run from love. Every really direct example of love that I've had in front of me has ended in goodbye and has ended in breakups and things like that. So I've developed this pattern of sort of running away when it comes time to fall in love. This song is sort of about finding the exception to that."

Taylor says she's particularly excited about some of the new things they used in the studio this time around, including an entire string session, and some other interesting things production-wise.