The history of writers who have found an outlet for inspiration in the visual arts is long and well documented. Many of the greatest names in literature—from Blake to Dostoevsky, Faulkner to Proust, Kafka to Updike—made drawings or paintings as well as put words on paper. But there are many kinds of artistic expression that complement the art of writing. The five authors profiled here have found inspiration in other crea-tive endeavors—cooking, photography, book-making, and, yes, painting and drawing—that feed their literary appetites while continually pushing them to explore and expand their ideas about art.

Michael Kimball is the author of three novels, an amateur painter, a documentary filmmaker, and a blogger who lives with his wife in Baltimore and works as a freelance editor. He began painting after reading an article about one of his favorite painters in the New Yorker and ever since then has used it as a way to enhance and sometimes work through issues that crop up in his writing. His third book, Dear Everybody (Alma Books, 2008), a novel written mostly as a series of letters by the narrator, who has committed suicide, was published in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada; his novel The Way the Family Got Away (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000) has been translated into five languages. For his ongoing blog, Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a Postcard), he regularly interviews people from around the world and condenses their life stories to postcard length.

Why did you begin painting?
I read an article about [abstract painter] Barnett Newman and was fascinated by the way he talked about his painting. It seemed like a metaphor for reading and writing to me. I had all of this scrap wood in the back of our house and a bunch of leftover latex paint, so I just tried it and kept going from there.

What type of painting do you do and when do you do it?
It's mostly abstract expressionist stuff. I like a lot of the early abstract expressionists—Newman, [Mark] Rothko, Hans Hofmann, and some painters today like Mary Heilmann, Sean Scully. I often will paint when I'm stuck with a piece of writing and think about how they created effects, how they used shape, color, line, texture to create not just the image, but a sense of feeling.

Do you feel you've found another voice through painting?
It gives me a new way to think about fiction—anything from the organization of the book to the narrators of the book. Because I know so much less about painting, having taught myself, I can still look at the painting and think, "Well, this doesn't work," and I paint over a painting that already existed. It's another way to think about revision; it's another way to think about creating an effect.

Do you paint as you're writing or as you're revising?
It's kind of a continuous thing. Dear Everybody is made up of about four hundred little pieces—a lot of letters from the main narrator, but there are also diary pieces and newspaper articles. At the same time, I was working on a painting that's made up of 225 squares of different colors, and thinking how to piece all the text together wasn't unlike thinking about how to piece together all those squares. Sean Scully does some paintings that look like tic-tac-toe figures.... He has paintings within paintings where you can see he built a canvas around another canvas. Structurally, this sort of fit with how I was thinking about Dear Everybody.

How would you describe your creative process?
I generally start with an image, a little bit, a sentence or a feeling. I don't plan it out, I don't have a plot, I don't think about characters so much. I just have this little thing that I start with and see where the narrator takes it. I try and figure it out as I go. Every day is trying to get some number of words down and the next day is going back and revising those and taking it a little further. Painting is a lot the same way. I may start with some form or some set of colors, but I keep working it over and over, and so it becomes layered. My writing involves a lot of revision. I rework things endlessly. The paintings I'm happier with are the ones I've reworked a lot.

Are there certain periods in which you dedicate more time to painting or writing?
There are periods when I've finished a draft of a novel and I don't want to start again. I want to get a little time away from it. I paint more often when I'm really stuck with something, when the fiction isn't working—the time at the keyboard isn't fixing what's wrong with the fiction, and that's when I walk away and try not thinking about it explicitly. And when I come back to the fiction, often there's a solution.

Do you ever feel pulled between the painting and the writing?
Every once in a while that happens, but I've kept the painting separate. The writing becomes public. The paintings almost no one has ever seen unless they come to my house or to the house of someone I've given one of the paintings to. And so it's more private in a sense. It's just a thing I do on my own without any other worry.

What inspired you to do the life story project?
I'd written a bunch of them at a performance art festival. People would sit down and I would interview them in about five minutes and ask them the highlights of their life and what mattered most to them, what they wanted to do, those sorts of things and they would tell me and I would write it on the spot for them right there. It was one of the strangest experiences I ever had as a writer. I was really moved by what and how much people told me. A week after I did the first bunch at the festival, one of the people got in touch with me and said that I had taken a dark and difficult time in her life and made it something manageable. She said it was a kind of postcard therapy. It sort of broke my heart. Once the blog started, I started getting requests from all over and it really just grew in a surprising way. I've written almost two hundred of them now.

Have these projects helped to market your fiction?
The painting doesn't at all since it's something I do and hang on my wall. The postcard project accidentally turned into the best publicity I could have done. A lot of people came to the blog because of that. It wasn't a plan and I don't think I could think of something like that if I tried for that purpose. It just happened.

Is there some way in which all your projects come together for you as a writer?
I like to make things. I'm happiest when I'm making things. I have found that I can't write all the time. If I were to write fiction even eight hours a day, I would be exhausted. But I've found by doing different things, I can do a lot more. By thinking about a problem with one particular art form it pushes me to think about another art form. 

Five Paintings That Inspire Kimball
Mary Heilmann's Neo Noir
Alfred Jensen's My Oneness, a Universe of Colours
Barnett Newman's The Wild
Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Bild
Alma Thomas's Evening Glow

Michelle Wildgen is the author of You're Not You (Thomas Dunne Books, 2006), a New York Times Editor's Choice and one of People magazine's Ten Best Books of 2006. A film by Hilary Swank and Denise DiNovi based on the novel is currently in development. Her second novel, But Not for Long (Thomas Dunne Books), was published last October. She's the senior editor of Tin House Magazine and a serious cook, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin. When she's not writing or editing, she's visiting farmers markets and exotic groceries, as well as finding loopholes in FDA law for ordering imported cheeses on the Internet.

How does cooking play into your writing process?
It ends up being a really handy thing at the end of the day. There are those times when you hit your limit of usefulness for the day. You write, you edit, you generate work, and you're living in this one little spot of the brain almost all the time, so it's a massive release to stand up, to use your hands, to let your mind wander in the way it does when you're engaged differently. That's usually how I use it—to feel like I'm still accomplishing something pleasurable in a completely different way.

Do you ever use cooking when you're stuck in a certain spot in a story?
I cook in the same way that I write. Another good friend of mine is a cook in a really different way than I am in that he does it very technically; I'll just go ahead and make it. Later on I'll be like, "That didn't work so well because I did X, Y, or Z." I think my writing is the same, where it's just kind of giving it a shot, messing with it, and being willing to throw it out if it fails.

Are you the type of writer who has to work in a certain environment?
I usually sit at my really crappy little thirty-dollar Ikea desk. I thought when we moved [to Wisconsin] that I'd sit and look out my big window at the trees, but in fact I sit with the shades down. I don't really notice what's around me when I'm working.

Are there certain periods where you turn more to cooking or more to writing?
For the last year I've felt like I had really almost no time to write, if I had any time at all. I still do Tin House, and I picked up another developmental-editor job and a freelance job and I would still cook from time to time. But when I was working on revisions of But Not for Long, I was just sitting there telling my husband to bring me food because there was no time to cook. I was on deadline, just sitting at my computer. There definitely are periods where it seems to be one or the other, but usually there is a much more pleasant balance. I'm not somebody who is even able to write for eight hours a day or write through the night. I write for four or five hours and I feel like that's a day well spent.

Do you think having an alternate interest—something beyond reading, writing, and editing—has made you a better writer?
I do. Especially as a fiction writer, you need other tools to build that world that is not just about...reading and writing. If that was your milieu for everything you wanted to express, it would be kind of boring. So that's where these alternate things come in for any writer. They just give you more tools. All your characters have to go around and do things. They have to want things that are material and to live in a sensory world.

You write fiction, you're an active cook, you edit for Tin House, you're married. How do you balance all of it?
There are times when I can do all of it nicely, when I turn from one thing to the next and I really enjoy the variety, and there are times when something else comes up and something else just has to fall by the wayside. And I would love to say that I don't make myself feel guilty when that happens, but I do.

When you're stuck with a project or starting a new one, where do you turn for inspiration?
A lot of times it's writing prompts, the kinds of things your teachers would give you. One of Anne Lamott's prompts in Bird by Bird is to write about school lunches. A lot of times it's food related. I'll write about what people eat when no one is around. What they love to eat or never will. I may never use it, but I like those personal things that people don't necessarily share. Forgetting about whatever plot point I'm trying to do or question I'm trying to answer about a character—that's usually what works for me.   

Wildgen's Favorite Recipe
Pasta With Cauliflower, Olives, and Feta
1/4 cup olive oil
6 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
2 dried chili peppers, crumbled (or vary the amount, to taste)
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes in juice (I like to puree these by putting a little handheld immersion blender into the opened can, but you don't have to. However, don't use a heavy canned tomato puree—it won't have the lighter, fresher taste of the diced ones in juice, which you want.)
salt and pepper, to taste
1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
1 pound short pasta, such as ziti or penne
1/2 cup chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley, basil, tarragon, or arugula
a big handful (maybe 3/4 cup, or more if you like) of Sicilian green olives, pitted and coarsely chopped
1/2 cup crumbled feta, or more or less to taste

1. Heat a large pot of salted water to a boil.

2. Meanwhile, in another heavy-bottomed, wide pan, heat olive oil over medium heat and add garlic and chili pepper. Cook, stirring now and then, until garlic is golden but not browned. Add the tomatoes, some salt and pepper, and let it simmer for a few minutes. Then add the cauliflower pieces, lower the heat a bit, and cover. Ideally, you should add the cauliflower about the same time as you add the pasta to the boiling water. When the cauliflower is tender, you're ready to go.

3. Drain the pasta when it still feels a little firm, because you're going to finish it off in the hot tomato sauce. Add the pasta to the pan of tomato-cauliflower sauce and toss well. Add the fresh herbs and toss again, then add your olives and toss once more. When you serve the pasta, scatter the cheese over the top of the bowls. You may want to wait to taste before you add any more salt, since the olives and feta will be salty too. Serves 5–6.

Jesse Ball is the author of the poetry collection March Book (Grove Press, 2004) and two novels, The Way Through Doors (Vintage, 2009) and Samedi the Deafness (Vintage, 2007). He was awarded the 2008 Plimpton Prize for his story "The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp, and Carr," and a book of poetry and prose, The Village on Horseback, is forthcoming in 2010 from Milkweed Editions. Ball also has illustrated books. He and his wife, Icelandic poet Thordis Björnsdottir, coauthored The Disastrous Tale of Vera and Linus, a haunting story about a sinister couple, which features sketches by Ball and was published by the Icelandic press Nýhil in 2006. He also illustrated Björnsdottir's book of poetry Og svo kom nóttin (And Then Came the Night), published by Nýhil in 2006. He teaches unconventionally themed creative writing courses—some of which explore such topics as walking and lying—at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Did you start drawing before or after you began writing?
I've always done a lot of drawing. Even as a very small child I did lots of drawing. I drew monsters—sort of spiky monster guys with little legs and arms. At that time I decided I was going to write a letter to the Queen of England, so I did. The contents of the letter was mostly drawings of monsters. A year passed and I got a reply from the lady-in-waiting to the Queen saying that the Queen liked the monsters very much. I consider her my first patron, and that gave me the encouragement I needed. Despite years of discouragement thereafter, nobody could stop me from drawing, because the Queen told me it was fine.

When I was a little older than that, I had this big problem with my other types of drawings, landscapes with stuff flying around. I would just keep drawing and drawing on top of them. I guess they call it perseveration. I would draw a full drawing then draw another one on top of that and another one on top of that and another one on top of that until the whole paper was filled.

Drawing is something I do, in terms of the writing, because I feel like the drawings give another indication of the situation of the work, and that can help people understand my work better. But I make no claims to be a good artist.

How did you come to illustrate your wife's book?
She had an offer for a poetry book and there were drawings that I was thinking of doing, so we decided to combine them.... I did some of the drawings after the poems, and she did some of the poems after the drawings.

Do any of your drawings or writings inspire one another?
I wouldn't say that I've ever written something from a drawing, but I think for me the drawing is closely linked to handwriting, which is a very important thing for me. There are some people, like Rudolf Steiner—you know, the guy who did the Waldorf education system? He has a lot of stuff on handwriting and how a person should develop it. I like to keep journals, so I'm always thinking about my handwriting and changing it through the years and stealing new ways of doing letters from people that I like. I think the drawing and the handwriting are very linked because as my handwriting changes, my drawing also changes.

Does concentrating on the handwriting tie into your discipline as a writer?
Every way in which you can examine your practice and heighten it and move forward with it gives energy to the whole rest of your practice. So a small thing like changing the handwriting ends up easing the way toward other things.

How do feel about your drawings appearing in published books, if you don't consider yourself a good artist?
I'm very fond of the guys that I've made. But their purpose is less for someone to look at them and think, "This is so magnificent," and more to get a feeling of that drawing's position and representational space and what it's intended to do. From that person's sense of the position of a drawing, they can apply it to many other things within the work and get a vector of the work.

You write novels in a concentrated time period. How do you fill the voids between writing spurts?
I have a journal that I keep. I write things down. An example: I'm walking down the street and out of the corner of my eye I see somebody wearing pajamas and running around with a really large carrot; I get excited and write down "man with pajamas, carrot." By and large that's the writing process that goes on in between books. I believe that writing is a product of the perception you evolve as a writer.

As a writer do you feel like you have to be in a certain place to accomplish this?
I really like cafés in a country where my speaking of the language is bad enough that I have to concentrate [to understand it], so then you get this pleasant din of voices around you and you can write unfettered.

How does your teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago tie in?
In my teaching I try to get into people's practice and help rearrange it in a way that creates more work. Usually what stops writers from writing is some kind of poorly laid-out practice that causes them to get tired really quickly—to not want to write. You could be a great writer but if you don't have it orchestrated so that you want to write, then you're not going to produce anything.

While you were in college at Vassar you assembled your books and distributed them yourself.
When you write you don't want to surrender to a publishing company the moment when a book is judged to be a book or not a book. You decide if it's a book or not a book, no one else does. That's your prerogative as the writer. If you imagine yourself in a postapocalyptic world where—somehow you managed to survive—you're in this log cabin and there's a little printing press there, you're writing these books. You produce a book. Then it's a book. You just made a book. That kind of agency you want to have always. Whether you're in a postapocalyptic cabin or in your life now. You should never surrender that.

In terms of giving the manuscript out as a little book to people, for poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sometimes their audience was just the few friends they managed to pass the book out to. You're no less a writer. As soon as someone makes a book and gives it to someone else, that's the whole thing. There isn't anything to be added to it.

Abha Dawesar is the author of three critically acclaimed novels: That Summer in Paris (Nan A. Talese, 2006), Babyji (Anchor Books, 2005), which was recently optioned for film, and Miniplanner (Cleis Press, 2000). Her most recent novel, Family Values, was published by Penguin Books India last year. She is the recipient of the 2006 American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award, a 2005 Lambda Literary Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fiction fellowship. She was short-listed for the Prix Médicis Étranger, Prix Femina Étranger, and the Prix Bel Ami in France. Her photography, drawings, and paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world. She lives in New York City.

You take photographs, draw, and paint. Do you consider these other art forms as support for the writing or do you regard them all as separate endeavors, offering you different creative outlets as an artist?
The impulse for different art forms comes from different places; they are unique creative outlets that allow for diverse expression. There have been times when I'm working on a novel and have to actually forbid myself from doing art because it would eat too much time. A novel takes stamina and the rewards are delayed; art is appealing because it promises short-term fulfillment, and I'm afraid sometimes that I'll get so involved my writing will grind to a halt.

I do consider myself a writer first—partly because I have always written and also because it is my major activity in terms of the time I consecrate to it. I have memories of writing as early as the time I was eight. Photography came into my life later, in school; painting imposed itself in my twenties and drawing in my thirties. Video came to me eventually as an extension of photography. I sometimes mix these media. I am hoping to realize a project, time permitting, where I would use video along with photography and a lot of text to produce a whimsical but factual autobiography.

As a writer, what's your creative process like—from the initial inspiration to the revision process?
Each book has gone through a different process. With my most recent novel, Family Values, I knew that the palette of the book would be black, white, and gray rather than color. This was true from the very first pages all the way through until the last revision. With That Summer in Paris my prose was very much under the spell of the French language. I am currently working on a book that is structured like a spider's web (or the worldwide one, there are many similarities). Every short chapter seems to begin anew but adds to the story; the narrative returns again and again to its themes, though with each iteration the theme is changed. With this book, I actually drew the structure at different stages. In the beginning it seemed more like a book in three parts made of three interconnected anthills, but when the real structure was revealed there was a certain simplicity and logic to it that wasn't there with the other forms I had mapped. Sometimes, for me, writing is about making conscious what I already know.

Explain what you mean by describing Family Values as having a palette of black, white, and gray.
There is very little color in the book for a story that takes place in one of the world's most colorful countries [India]. In its mood as well as its moral ambiance, there are shades of black, white, and gray. While writing the book I internally thought of it very much in black-and-white images; when color appears it is exceptional. In a similar vein it eschews all exoticism: There are no saris and no spices, not even proper names. Detail lies instead in the microscopic description of sounds and odors, in human things related to our flesh that are universal. 

How does your photography play into your creative process as a writer?
In my first novel, Miniplanner, set in New York City, the speed of the narrative is akin to a hasty taxi ride; when a cab is in motion, some images take on a certain stillness and crystallize as photographs, while others escape memory. The novel was imagined in this vein with some of the more important scenes having an almost photographic quality.  

In That Summer in Paris photography became my major source of note taking. I photographed almost every corner that happens to come up in the narrative of my novel and used the photographs to evoke the place for me while I was writing. Instead of keeping notes by hand, I kept a visual journal. Using a notebook as an aid to the novel means that the experience has already been filtered at first through verbal consciousness. I found that maintaining a photo journal meant preserving the scene fresh for my novel. I, the person, didn't come in to verbalize, interpret, and intellectualize the scene—something that happens by default while writing. Instead, the novelist, while writing the narrative, saw the photos and was able to go back directly, perceptually, into the experience, which is to say, access the experience through the characters.

Photography is the only art form in which I have some training. I've not trained in the other visual arts or even creative writing. I started working a camera and developing my pictures while I was in school in India and my own memory works in still images and photos. When I evoke India, as I did in Babyji or Family Values, it's always this mental album that rolls in my head—still photographs in either black and white or color that capture street corners, faces, moments. My mind's eye plays less like a movie than a series of still images. The narrative of the novel provides the motion, the emotions, and the dialogue.  

Five Photographers Dawesar Recommends
Edgar
Elinor Carucci
Guillaume Herbaut
Anita Khemka
Anay Mann