Writers Recommend

"My yoga and meditation practices have become such an integral part of my writing life that I can't imagine what it would be like to sit down to write without knowing that, at some point in the day, I will be able to unroll my mat and quiet my mind. Quieting the mind is, for me, the biggest challenge. We live in an age of distraction, and the very instrument on which I write is also a portal into the outside world: The Internet is addictive and I have a hard time shutting it down. During the day I ping around—from my work to a quick e-mail check, back to my work, back online to look something up, something that could really wait until later—and before I know it, even if I've gotten work done, my mind feels like that old commercial about drugs. Do you remember the one? We see an egg. This is your mind. Then the egg is cracked against a hot griddle. This is your mind on drugs. My mind on the Internet needs soothing. It needs silence. It needs space, and when I unroll my mat, I am guaranteed that silence and space. Afterward, when I return to my desk, it is with that ironed, clean, smooth clarity, as if I'm starting my day all over again."
—Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion (HarperCollins, 2010)

“From the moment a writer is attached to a story, said Saul Bellow, he or she suddenly has ‘feelers all over the place.’ So once I’m attached, I draw inspiration from what I think the character in question would read or consume. My first novel is about a fashion designer starting his own label, and through a turn of events he winds up a suspected terrorist in post-9/11 New York City. I didn’t know squat about fashion design, so I read Coco Chanel’s biography by Edmond Charles-Roux from 1975. Then came The Beautiful Fall about the rivalry between Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent. Those texts inspired an alternate persona that I took on when sitting down to write. My ‘feelers’ were up, and a real person began to take shape. Once my hero was labeled an enemy combatant and sent to Guantanamo Bay, I read the only book he would be allowed, the Koran. You could call all this ‘research,’ but I don't. I find it to be more mystical than that.”
—Alex Gilvarry, author of From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant (Viking, 2012) 

“Pandit Pran Nath was a conduit for an understanding of Indian classical singing, and a major influence on American minimalism, whose disciples included Lamonte Young and Terry Riley. His two recordings of the deep, meditative Raga Malkauns are among the most extraordinary pieces of vocal music I’ve ever heard. Pran Nath’s voice is vast, raw, chthonic—as if granite had learned to sing. Sometimes I write listening to this music. Sometimes I have to switch it off, as I forget to type.”
—Hari Kunzru, author of Gods Without Men (Knopf, 2012)

“Often I thumb through animal books—the National Audubon Society’s field guides to birds and fish almost always shake something loose. For instance my poem 'Parts of a Feather' in Sagittarius Agitprop (Black Lawrence Press, 2009) was inspired by, and depends heavily on, such bird facts. While taking notes for Pot Farm (on site at a California medical marijuana farm), I paged through my eastern birds field guide, reading about the birds I would never see out West. This cleared my head, prepared me to revise my notes and cobble them together into something readable. There’s something about birds and fish in glossy books—their skeletal diagrams, their oddball mating habits—that set me to jotting something down. Right now, I’m motivated by the giant squid. I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately after having seen a photo of one in the Smithsonian. Travel also inspires. Last year, my wife and I traveled through India. The car-horn culture there is interesting, and infuriating. There are no rules of the road, at least none that we could detect. Cars shared space with rickshaws; tiny mopeds bearing families of eight, the two infants propped up on the handlebars; oxen; goats; dogs; and pedestrians. Drivers had to sound their horns constantly—not in a ‘get out of my way’ or ‘hurry up’ sort of construct, but as if to declare, feebly and succinctly amid the chaos, ‘I’m here!  I’m here!’—as some kind of reminder, reassurance. In writing, I think I’m beeping that horn.”
—Matthew Gavin Frank, author of Pot Farm (University of Nebraska Press, 2012)