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There's always a personal satisfaction in writing a song by yourself. You get the inspiration, and see it through, and you're done. It's focused and very personal.

I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.

I'm not like other writers. I'm not hung up on using my own songs. In fact, my sister Bunny always tells me I sing other people's songs better than my own. She says I loosen up and give the songs a different feel.

Sometimes when you're a songwriter, you kind of have this egotistic thing: you just want to write something that you love, and you don't care about if people like it or not, but personally, I want to write something that people can jive to.

That's what I love about songwriting - that you can write something about your own experiences and think it's completely specific to you, and then people can take away a completely different meaning for themselves. I really love that. I think you've been successful at writing a song when it has a larger life than yourself.

Not to take anything away from artists who don't write their own songs, but it's always been important to me to make sure it's my story.

I don't just write hits for myself, or for other artists, or to just be writing it. I write it because I was born to do this. I was given this gift, and I'm making the most of my opportunity.

Writing for yourself is like exposing your diary. It can be a little embarrassing at times, but if it helps somebody get through the day just by hearing a song, it's well worth it.

That's my favorite part about songwriting, the way you write a song, and someone else might hear it a different way.

I usually don't write songs by people calling me and saying, 'Write a song about this.' Usually I'm just going with what I want to write, so you never know.