L-word: What is your ritual when you write?

SH: Until my son was born my bounce was waking up, having coffee and go right into my studio and just sit down and write whatever comes. I would work until I have to do an interview or rehearse for a tour. I just really love this creative time. I loved best when I had nothing to do all day and I could keep coming back to songs and keep recording them until they were done. And those days won’t be until he’s in school, I guess. And that’s okay, though, because I’ve been doing this ritual for so many years I think I was ready for a change. So now it depends. On the Janis show I’m looking at being a performer so I have to learn my lines, I have to go in every day after warming up my voice a lot. I have to learn her and become her as a singer, which is very difficult because she had a different style and had a much higher voice so for we me to imitate Janis is a lot of work.

So that’s a whole other thing and I’m getting into it now but for me the comfortable ritual, when I can get back to that, it’s going to be like coming home again. Now I’m in an uncomfortable place trying to make a new ritual of being a performer. I’m getting up with my son, having so much fun with him, breakfast, getting dressed, playing, walking around the neighborhood, taking him to his preschool and then I have to work, work, work because I have to pick him up at three. Then he goes to bed early and I have plenty of time to work. He doesn’t get in my way. I don’t want to give that impression. I love being with him and I love being a mother. I almost wish sometimes that I could just be a mother just for a period of time, but I do have to keep working.

L-word: Do you have a song that was the most challenging to write? You tried to convey your thoughts, your ideas but they just wouldn’t come.

SH: Yes, a lot. It’s hell and some of those songs never get finished. Like “Walking On Thin Ice” on “Wilderness” album. I love this song and a lot of people said they loved it. It’s just, I wrote the verse and I could not get the chorus and it was a living hell. The worst thing for me is being mediocre and I always try to go through the mediocre to get to good and I think that’s what many people didn’t realize. They stop at mediocre not realizing that to become great you really have to push yourself. That’s what I think the process of writing is. You have to know when it’s not enough and when it is mediocre. Sometimes I go sleep and I think, “I got it, I did it, I found it.” Then I wake up in the morning and I go, “Oh, it’s terrible.” And that happens to me so often. With some song I know that I will get through it, I will find the answer, and sometimes I want to kill myself. “Walking On Thin Ice” was one of those. What finally happened with that song was that I dreamed playing the chords and when I got up and was playing the piano I realized that it was just like my dream.

L-word: This is how you deal with the writer’s block?

SH: I just work through it. I just know that I can’t live with myself until I get to the other side of it. I think walks help, yoga, or exercise, anything that can take your mind off of things. Creative process is so interesting. We don’t even really know where it comes from. The truth is that we have to relax. Since I’ve gotten older I just know that it will come. It also changed with me being a mother. You can’t force anything as a mother. I’ve seen mothers doing it all the time and it hurts them. You just have to relax.