Liz Phair On Writing After Midnight

The indie rock icon talks about her creative workflow, the emotional challenges of collaboration, and why she’s always been a bedroom writer

The first conversation in a series exploring the workflow of noted authors and other creators.

Occupation: Singer/songwriter

Preferred tools: Guitars with multiple tunings; Voice Memos app; pencil and paper.

Creative hours: After midnight

Writing space: Bedroom

Do you have a set routine for writing songs?

Definitely. But I think everybody gets in a rut sometimes where you have to do something different. For this record, I’m working in multiple tunings, and I have about ten guitars in my bedroom that are tuned to different tunings. I don’t even know what they are; I should really sit down and figure out what they are. But one of the things that’s so interesting about songwriting is that because of this, I can transpose a song — if it’s not interesting enough in E, say — I can just walk around my room, strum a guitar, and take that same song and throw it into an entirely different tuning, and make up the fingering as I go. It makes a song that can be sort of bland and obvious turn into a song that’s…