Clare Bowditch is her own worst enemy.

The songstress goes about her craft in ways that send her counterparts into the depths of self-focused frustration. She makes it look easy, as any Bowditch fan will profess. Yet what we the audience don't see is what goes on underneath; the pains and pitfalls of each creative struggle through which every song is born, a struggle which seems somewhat romantic to those of us on the outside. Ironically it's that process which forms the basis of Clare's latest single, 'One Little River'.

"I can't quite remember where I was when I was writing it. But basically it's a story about the things that get in our way when we go to do something that requires courage. Usually the things that get in our way are just the way that we talk to ourselves."

I ask Clare how often she finds herself tripping over her own feet, hoping that she doesn't take the question literally.

"At least 30 million times a day! I don't know that I overcome it, but I just let it be there and I keep doing what I need to do anyway. The worst thing that we can do is stop because we believe what we're telling ourselves. Everyone in the world, at some stage in their life, has a story about how they're not good enough. Some of us believe those stories and we let it prevent us from doing what we suspect we should be doing in the world and this is a song for that very time."

Clare laughs while making these confessions. Getting where she is has taken generous amounts of both determination and luck, and it's perhaps her refusal to take things for granted that allows Clare to understand that the glass really is half-full. I ask Clare if she has ever, as she put it, prevented herself from finishing what she started. Her voice suddenly drops into a measured, quasi-serious tone.

"It depends on the song! The song 'You Make Me Happy' just flopped out of me in ten minutes. The song 'An Amazing Life' I started writing when I was 18 and finished when I was 36. The most difficult thing in any creative endeavour is to actually finish it. Paul Dempsey and I did some muck-around songwriting last year and all the songs are great and they're just sitting there on our iPhones completely unfinished. The main thing is just allowing time to finish what you start, and I'm regularly guilty. I have about a one out of every fifteen strike rate in things that I start and finish in terms of songs."

Clare's strike rate may be low, but when a connection is made the entire nation seems to feel it. Her development of 'Winter Secrets' is a perfect example; not so much a tour as it is a roving art piece, utilising audiences in each city to create something different, something unique.

"It started off four or five years ago as just a little solo tour where I could do random creative experiments. So basically I make the use of my audiences and teach them quick backup lines to sing back to me, and have a lot of play, a lot of cabaret, a lot of humour, and a lot of honest conversations between the audience and myself. It was a completely different format of show for me, it was very much about diminishing the fourth wall."

'Winter Secrets' now involves a collaborator joining Clare on stage, with the torch being passed to Melbourne's Spender. I had to admit, I'd never heard the name before. I asked Clare what it was that had led her to chose him. "You haven't heard of him?" she responds, as if she'd found out that I'd spent my life living in the desert. "Holy shit, look him up now. You are in for a treat."

Clare is happy with where she is for now, yet is wary that a future may exist where others are not so lucky and where any flame of creativity in others may be more easily extinguished. Funding cuts to the arts have been especially severe in Qld.

"Arts funding was the leg-up that I had early in my career that actually allowed me to create my first album. That was a small grant at the right time in my career, so I think investing in the art is just clever because like any other successful artist in Australia I've been able to turn over millions of dollars of income for my country."

For the record, Clare doesn't want you to take that quotation too seriously. After all, no one is that patriotic. Clare's true passion is for the arts, yet it extends far beyond her own career as a singer-songwriter. After a decade of dreaming, 2013 saw her launch 'Big Hearted Business', an initiative aimed at helping musicians better manage the business side of their careers. With a stanza such as that on her resume it's no surprise that Clare is not impressed with the way politicians have played with funding to the arts, particularly in recent years.

Funding hasn't been the only hurdle Clare has been forced to overcome over the course of her career. Long before she had even turned 30, record label executives both home and abroad considered her too old to start a successful career. Yet the shocking part isn't that Clare faced discrimination at such a young age — what's shocking is the possibility that the practice remains in place today.

“If you think record labels don't take your age into account you're fooling yourself. Early in my career there was definitely no interest from record companies to sign a 27-year-old mother of one who was making her debut solo album. I remember going into a meeting in the UK to sign over there and having a great conversation and it all going well, and then it came up that I was 33 and a mother. I was basically dismissed from the meeting! Record companies are under the impression that there was a very narrow ideal of how to be a successful female singer songwriter. But thanks to independent technology which allows people like me to build careers, I think labels are much more open to diversity now.”

Clare Bowditch plays The Hi-Fi on Friday August 16.