“I’m fortunate that I don’t often feel stuck, but I have plenty of days—most days—when I don’t feel like writing. Something always happens on the page if I can make myself sit in the chair and weather the ten minutes of terror as every excuse not to write darts through my head and I watch the cursor blink back at me. Two things that bookend my writing sessions help me stay in the chair, stay inspired, and stay motivated to do it all over again. The first, of course, is reading. While I’m primarily a fiction writer, before sitting down to work on short stories or a novel, I read poetry. Right now that happens to be Daniel Khalastchi’s incredible book Tradition (McSweeney’s, 2015). The absolute concentration on language is palate cleansing and invigorating. The second thing is to work out. As writers we spend so much time in our heads that it’s good to remember we have bodies as well. Doing something physical after a long writing stretch helps me recharge so that I can summon the will to sit down at the desk the next day.”
—Andrew Malan Milward, author of I Was a Revolutionary (Harper, 2015)