Writers Recommend

"Lately I've been writing poems on my iPhone. But I also like to write poems on Post-it notes and in my trusty sketchbook, too. Writing on various media, not letting myself get comfortable, is very helpful. I also like to send myself off into what I call coffee shop exile. Being in public spaces makes me a little edgy, which is good for my writing.

"Also, if I want to write but can't find a way in, often the best thing I can do is read any old John Ashbery book of poetry. I write almost nothing like him, but reading his work gets me leaping in interesting directions.

"Finally, recently, I've been listening to Jack Teagarden's jazz trombone music while I write. When I play his greatest hits through my headphones while I sip my latte, I can write like a madman."

—Frank Giampietro, author of Begin Anywhere (Alice James Books, 2008)

"I am very interested in cities and places, and in having conversations with them. Research and lists are big for me. Often, lists I make become poems unto themselves. Notes from my research make some of the strongest lines in my poems, I've found, or, like the lists, turn into poems of their own. I began my book The Straits in response to the sparse but lyrical narration in a Russian film, Palms, so I find listening for refrains and cadences—anywhere and everywhere—then responding to them highly evocative. It's not something I do deliberately, as some do by listening to music, but I always find myself tuning into certain rhythms when I'm out and about or in something I'm reading and later realize that it has entered my work."
—Kristin Palm, author of The Straits (Palm Press, 2009)

"I need to feel invested in life to write. So I dance to music that compels life into my body: any from the old hippie Broadway musicals—Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair—any Latin ballroom or belly dance, any Jay-Z, Madonna, Run-DMC, George Michael, Black Eyed Peas and I'm at ‘Boom Boom Pow' with life.

"Being at uninhibited physical ease with the universe creates space in me for the rich interiorities people cart around as they move, in their own ways, in the variously hospitable worlds of our making. If the story is stuck, I let it be and begin something else; the given day is too precious to squander on battling the occasionally intransigent fictions of my mind. Eventually, it becomes possible to return. The trail separation gives us both new perspectives; if the differences are irreconcilable, there's always divorce. Not everything I write must be seen and read, nor every story told."
—Ru Freeman, A Disobedient Girl (Atria Books, 2009)

"To break from the heavy lifting of writing moderately vulgar dark comedies, first I will turn to Rimbaud's Une Saison en enfer for some light reading. Then I will wander outside to see if there are any important public gatherings. If there are no gatherings, I return to the house and head downstairs to the basement where I will spend a few minutes adding to my bottle cap collage of the Nuremberg Trial. For lunch, I boil one egg and eat it on dry bread. This is a crucial moment in the writing day, for it is now that I remember the jar of orange marmalade in the refrigerator. If I forgo the marmalade, I will immediately return to my desk, put away the Rimbaud and continue writing the moderately vulgar dark comedy. If I give into the marmalade, I will not only not return to the comedy, I will not write another sentence all day; rather I will drift between a greedy ecstasy and a brooding malaise, dreaming of utopian countries in the shape of rectangles—unless, of course, the mail comes—"
—Jessica Anthony, author of The Convalescent (McSweeney's Books, 2009)