Liz Phair

"I’ve never been as excited or as proud of any breakthrough in music as I was when I reached the speed at which my thoughts flowed seamlessly from my fingers."

—Liz Phair, on the evolution of her prose writing process.

I envy Liz Phair.

Like all writers, I aim for that ideal state when words fly effortlessly from my fingers without pause, when I’m not stopping to think about what word I should type next. I don’t always achieve that state, but it feels so good when I do.

A few years ago, Phair got there because, like any writer—song or prose—she’s constantly fine tuning her writing process. And one of those fine tunings involved moving from the keyboard to the pen. She doesn’t always use pen and paper, but shifting to this medium got Phair to that state of nirvana that all writers crave: when words appear on the page in a steady stream of coherence. “When that happened, it felt like a superpower. It was such a difference: I went from having to think the sentence and peck it out to just having the thoughts flow from my fingers,” she told me.

Good writers also know that they have to be flexible with their creative process. And Liz Phair can create anywhere. She loves a good Olympic size pool, with the freestyle as her preferred stroke for creativity. “That stroke is probably when I’m working on stuff the most,” she told me. “Three strokes and a breath on the left, then three strokes and a breath on the right.” She’s written many songs after dreams: a melody comes to her at 3am, then she picks up her phone and tries to sing that melody as a voice memo in her best 3am voice. She can write anywhere and at any time too, as long as no one is listening.

But good writers also that when something stops working, they try something else. To wit: Phair is writing her next book freehand after finding that the formalized nature Word and Scrivener made her angry. She tried writing in a local coffee shop but realized after a while that what she produced wasn’t very good.

Liz Phair’s excellent new release is called Soberish, out now. Read our interview after the video for “Spanish Doors.”

Where do you do most of your writing?

A

Funny you should ask because I've been writing my next book freehand. I don’t know how I'm going to do this because no one can read it. It’s insane. But I just bought two notebooks that sit beside my bed. I have stacks upon stacks of notebooks that I use for all of my writing. Then I take pictures of the pages in case I lose them.

Writing by hand allows my writing to flow in a way that typing doesn’t. For some reason, when I see something like Word or Scrivener, I get angry at it. I started to write by hand because I was feeling a lot of pressure to write, and every time I stared at the screen and the formalized nature of the document, I became resentful. I have to cycle my way through different methods of writing to trick myself out of writer’s block. I’ll switch mediums, and that will break the cycle. When I’m blocked, it’s usually because I'm tired of that way of writing.

What do you do when you get in that rut?

A

There was a time before I wrote Horror Stories when I went to the coffee shop every day. I wrote tons. But there’s a difference between what sticks and what is just written down. All of it was crap. So even though it was fun to be there, the writing was not good.

 But isn’t getting through the crap important?

A

I remember when I was learning how to write prose before anyone knew I was doing it. I started when I was scoring for television. I wrote for about ten years before I put out Horror Stories. I don’t know that I’ve ever been as excited or as proud of any breakthrough in music as I was when I reached the speed at which my thoughts flowed seamlessly from my fingers. When that happened—and I think it was after about six NaNoWriMos when I could type at the speed of my thoughts—it felt like a superpower. It was such a difference: I went from having to think the sentence and peck it out to just having the thoughts flow from my fingers.

I’ve heard that, though, and believe it. When we type, on some level we’re always thinking about that next word, so it’s a two-step process. But freehand often eliminates that brief hesitation we have before we put that word on the page.

A

Well, I do edit as a write, and a lot of people tell me I'm wrong and that I should wait to edit until after I write. But I know that I won't have the patience to go back and start over. I write for a paragraph or two then go back and edit. I don’t want to leave the page until it reads halfway decently. And once I leave that page, I don’t want to go back to it. My editing belongs in the passenger seat, not the back seat. It’s a constant three-legged race, but it works for me.

Have you read Anne Lamott’s essay “Shitty First Drafts,” where she talks about the importance of the, well, shitty first draft?

A

I have, but I have to be true to my muse. If I’m not true to that, then I’m not listening to my natural self. I will go back and edit songs to make the grammar incorrect if it sings better and feels more true.

But great singers can make the correct grammar sing well. I’d rather have an imperfect alive song than a perfect dead one, and I’m not enough of a vocalist to do that. I envy people who can take anything and sing it in a way that gives you chills. If I could give myself one gift, I’d like to be a better interpretive singer. On the song “Dosage,” I wanted to sing the melodies differently from what Brad and Joel wanted. I wanted them in different timings, and they were upset by that. It took me about five steps to get it to where I wanted it to be, and now it’s so much better. So I’m working more on not always staying in time and on interpreting it differently. I’ll write it in time, but I’ll sing it like a vocalist covering the song.

 I interviewed Daniel Lanois recently, and he told me that he writes songs on 18x22 art paper, and it’s not linear at all. There are thought bubbles, arrows, words everywhere. Is your process like that, or is it somewhat linear?

A

I almost never write down songs. They're almost all in my head and in voice memos. It’s auditory. I sort songs as either alive or dead. I’ve written plenty of clever and well-crafted songs that I consider dead. Alive to me means somewhat unfinished but a very powerful thought.

There’s a particular marriage between a lyric and the music I'm playing that excites me, that makes me feel very alive, and my job is not to fuck it up in the rest of the verses so that those verses don’t just come in immediately. That’s very dangerous. I feel like I’m a surgeon in an open chest cavity, and I only have a certain amount of time before bacteria gets in there. Because if I don’t finish it then, chances are the second verse and bridge will be dead. Sometimes I can resuscitate it if I take some time away from it, like a month or two. But there’s a high likelihood that if I don’t finish it that night, the second verse will never satisfy me.

photos by Eszter+David

How much does the idea of ritual matter to your creative process?

A

Other than not wanting anyone else around, we’re good. I can write anywhere and anytime, as long as I know no one is listening. The process usually starts in the bedroom because I have these ideas spontaneously and just want to grab a guitar. I don’t want to wait. I don’t go set up to write a song. There’s a feeling I have, and when I get that feeling, I have to write. Then I need to decide whether it’s prose or a song.

A lot of my songs start as melodies in my dreams, and I record those voice memos at night. Then I listen back during the day and write the song. Soberish has about three purely dream songs. It freaks me out because I wake up and hear it in my head at 3am, but my voice is so rusty that I can’t sing it. I get terrified that the memory of the song will fade away before I can make my voice hit the pitches. What’ll happen next is that I’ll have an impetus to write a song. Then I’ll grab the guitar, listen to the voice memo, put some chords to it, and it’ll eventually become a song. I’ve been very happy with my dream melodies lately. They’ve been happening a lot.

I’m guessing you have hundreds of voice memos. Do you go back to them when you’re in a rut and maybe mix and match with the lyrics?

A

I have so many voice memos. But I don’t do what you describe because I write songs all at once. Some of my best songs were written first before being put to music, but that’s rare.

There are a lot of dead bodies in my phone. There are so many voice memos in there, and I don’t always label them. So I have to spend so much time going back through them, which isn’t ideal. This means that when I’m in the studio and haven’t labeled correctly, six months later when the song is done and I have to remember what the guitar line was, I have to endlessly scroll through all these unlabeled recordings to find the right one. Then I have to listen to each one to see if it’s the correct one. It’s so inefficient. I do not recommend this.

How important is the role of movement to your creative process? Activities like walking, running, swimming, things like that.

A

Walking doesn’t, but swimming always did when I had easy access to a long pool. I need an Olympic size pool. At different times of my life, I’ve been a very active lap swimmer. I love the fluidity of the movement and the flip turns. There’s something very satisfying about a good a flip turn. When I’m thinking about something, I’ll do freestyle with alternate breathing: three strokes and a breath on the left, then three strokes and a breath on the right. That stroke is when I’m probably working on stuff the most. Swimming is my sport of meditative clarity.

Is it the activity itself or the mindless and repetitive nature of the activity that promotes creativity?

A

I think it’s the all-body physical stimulation. I like to be almost naked in a fluid. I like to feel unclothed where all my skin is being sensitized, but my ears and my eyes are almost muffled. It’s like a sensory deprivation chamber. It’s a repetitive motion that also involves stimulation.

Now that I think about it, when I was a kid I spent all of my time underwater. I’d take a breath and go under for as long as I could, doing these underwater dances, thinking and seeing in my mind. The lifeguard would get upset because I'd be underwater so much, so my father would make me swim a lap to prove to the lifeguard that I could swim. Then I’d go back to being underwater, thinking up all these elaborate stories and ideas while dancing in all these weird ways.

Is there anything you like to have with you when you write?

A

A sticky good object is important. You can’t see, smell, or touch that stickiness, but some objects will just do it for you. That objects triggers a connection to another side of yourself.

I have all my guitars in different tunings, about six tunings in the house now. I have taken to writing a song on one tuning, then going to another guitar and trying to find it on another tuning. Finding and playing that song on another part of the fretboard gives another color to the chords and the way the chords go with the melody since it’s in a different tuning. I find that to be incredibly productive now. I did that a lot on the new album. It’s all about chasing that aliveness.

Can you write about places or emotions when they’re close, or do you need distance from them?

A

I don’t think time matters to me that much. I can write just as easily about something that happened a long time ago as something that happened last night. But location is a big factor. When I come off tour, don’t talk to me for a week solid because I’ll be writing songs. Shifting geographically makes a huge difference in my inspiration.

Let’s talk about your prose writing process. Do you write until you run out of gas, or do you set page goals?

A

I write until the story has a circular shape and it’s finished. And that can be brutal. Brutal. I seem to have this ability to foresee what next needs to happen, and that can be exhausting. I’ll write all night when that happens. It’s a weird feeling when I can see what’s coming next because I feel myself racing towards it in the ether. But when I can’t see the shape of the story, I’ll abandon it and come back a month or two later.

How much reading have you been able to do over the past year?

A

I used to read a lot more, but in 2020 I didn’t read a lot. Isn’t that weird? I did read hundreds and hundreds of medical abstracts. And I’m doing that because rather than relying on secondary sources, I want the actual data, the primary source.

Do you have any favorite authors?

A

I’ll tell you something about being 54. I refuse to make my brain easy for people to understand. I’m no longer in the business of trying to shape my brain to fit what people need me to explain about myself. When people ask me about my favorite this or my top ten that, it’s like saying that my rich and varied reading life isn’t valid if I haven’t sorted it vertically and collated it into this curated notion of my identity so that people can comprehend me better. I don’t think that notion accurately portrays how I've experienced my life if someone whittles my life down to a list of my favorites. I’m a very curious and avid reader of all things.

Well, you made me realize that I can’t even answer that question. I don’t have any favorites either. I know people who read one author then read everything by that author. I'm the opposite. When I finish a book, my first thought is to listen to another voice and gain as many rich experiences as possible. I won’t read something else by that author, at least for a while.

A

I try to do that in my art. I want to make things that are a challenge at first then open up to the audience. My favorite experiences are when something is confusing or challenging then becomes a window into a new world. If something is immediately accessible, it’s not fun. That’s my favorite thing to create for other people and my favorite thing to experience.