Here is a compilation of some nice songwriting tip snippets from a variety of songwriters, with accompanying links to their full articles. Check it:

Ben Gibbard, Death Cab For Cutie

“Writing is such a solitary act. You spend hours alone, only with your thoughts, and you torture yourself. It’s a tendency of many writers to temper the self-destructive act of writing with other self-destructive acts. I certainly was one of those people for a long time.”
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Julian Casablancas, The Strokes

“I pick up whatever’s near, I guess. The thing I use a lot now [reaches in pocket and pulls out a matching digital recorder to the one I am using to record the interview ] –- cheers, ding -– is this digital recorder thing. I used to do everything by memory back in the day. I don’t know, some fascination with the Greek poets, you know they just memorized everything. So I’d be working between one and three parts, or songs, at a time. But when I started a few years ago recording stuff, I realized listening back, the things I thought were great were sometimes mediocre -– and the things I forgot about, that I thought were nothing, were great. And it kind of freaked me out. So now I record everything, and I have thousands of [recordings]- so I just play all the time and if I feel like I’m doing something that could be cool I just record it. Give work for future Julian. That’s what I do.”
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Corinne Bailey Rae

“When I was writing this album, there was no one else, sort of, in the room. There was no one else to run it by. And I felt like I was just, kind of, singing out. So I wasn’t thinking: “Right. What’s a good melody for this? Oh, okay, what words would work?” I was just more playing my guitar and just kind of improvising and moving around. You know, to me, it’s made some quite weird songs that some people will like. I guess some people won’t like them, you know. But, to me, I just felt a lot of freedom in actually being able to sit there with my guitar and with a tape recorder, you know. And play, and sing, and not really think about what was doing and not even think, like, trying to remember it, because it was going to get recorded.”
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Peter Bauer Lisbon, The Walkmen

The majority of songs start with Paul [Maroon] our guitar player writing a melody line, then Walt [Martin] our bass player will play drums, then Ham will sing and make a part of music like that. That’s how everything starts. We do a lot by just stepping around 8-tracks. I’ll put something on it, whatever instrument I’m playing on it, then we’ll make a whole song of it. Then we get together at the last step and see if it will work. It always originates with these simple sounding 8-tracks that Paul and Walt will do. Ham can start to make it an actual song or not.
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Bill Withers

“If I knew how to explain songwriting,’ he says, “I would write a bestselling book. If that’s what you do, that’s what you are. You are that.’
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Gwen Stefani, No Doubt

She also recalls some very valuable advice she received from the iconic guitarist and pop singer-songwriter, Prince. Stefani explains, “Prince, who is one of my idols, gave me some advice when I worked with him: “Have you ever just tried writing a hit? Like, don’t just try writing a song, try and write a hit song.’ I remember him saying that and me thinking, Yeah, you’re right. Why would you write anything else?”
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