When the work is going well, I often get up to tend to other tasks—I might fold some towels or start the dishwasher—because when writing comes easily I feel energized by it. When the work is slower, less certain, I want nothing more than to absorb language, to notice each syllable. In these moments, rather than leave the writing desk, I feel more compelled to stay. Sometimes I read The Art of Fiction interviews from the Paris Review, or I read poetry. There are critics whose essays I read even if the work they are critiquing is unfamiliar; I admire not only the ferocious intelligence, but also the total immersion: to see how much fiction can matter, what it can draw out, the way it opens conversation.
I keep a file of possible epigraphs and title ideas—full sentences and fragments, lines of poetry, song lyrics—not necessarily with the goal of using them, but because as time passes, my distance from them reminds me of my own interests: Why did I stop reading that novel to make note of that sentence? Which words leapt out, and why? The list becomes its own kind of writing prompt.
—Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, author of The Other Wife (Riverhead Books, 2025)
Photo credit: Kelly Shimoda