Writers Recommend

In this online exclusive we ask authors to share books, art, music, writing prompts, films—anything and everything—that has inspired them in their writing. We see this as a place for writers to turn to for ideas that will help feed their creative process.

Amanda Goldblatt

9.26.19

“There are times I find myself unable to write: not a block but a stasis. I need to be shook and shunted away from general predictability. Sometimes it works to have a slight ringing in my ears. The first noise show I went to might’ve been Justice Yeldham circa 2002. I was helping with sound as a work-study gig. That night the Australian musician held a pane of glass up to his mouth and blew aggressive raspberries. A contact mic on the glass picked it all up, broadcasting burred vibrations and body noises.

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Maya Phillips

9.5.19

“I used to get really distressed by my writing dry spells, but since I’m also an arts journalist I always have that medium to turn to when my poems are giving me grief. Taking in different forms of art and looking at them critically opens my mind up to different possibilities in my poetry. (Museums are great for that too.) But simply reading good writing helps most of all. Because I’m deeply in love with both theater and poetry, Anne Carson is one of my patron saints and inspirations.

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Melissa Rivero

8.29.19

“Whenever I feel stuck in my writing, I change up my writing routine. I have kids, so I typically write for twenty- or thirty-minute spurts during the day, usually at coffee shops after I drop them off at school, then on the commute to and from work, or on my lunch breaks. But if I’m stuck, I’ll listen to music or read during my usual writing times, and instead, write at night. I won’t necessarily go back to the actual work-in-progress.

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Rion Amilcar Scott

8.22.19

“Often it feels like overwhelm is a constant heckler and I’m on stage unable to formulate the next joke, word, sentence, line—entire stories robbed from me by this hack clown. When this was an intermittent problem instead of a chronic one, I came up with a solution I turn to more and more. I call it my Recharge List. The list is a catalog of activities that break through the clutter and allow imagination and sentences to flow again. There are different cures for different moods.

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Aatif Rashid

8.15.19

“There are certain writers whose prose is so deft and beautiful that reading them can inspire whatever I happen to be working on, even if the style, setting, or genre are completely different. One is Thomas Pynchon, whose prose I’ve been obsessed with ever since I discovered his 1966 novel The Crying of Lot 49. I’ll often go back to the first paragraph of that book to remind myself that it’s possible to write something complex, lyrical, and full of specific detail, but also something that’s funny and that really moves. Hilary Mantel is another such writer.

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Julia Phillips

8.8.19

“Stuck feelings come to me in two ways: first, a story-level stickiness, when I’m working on a project but don’t know where it’s headed next, and second, a more existential stickiness, when I don’t have a project and don’t know where I myself am headed. The first one is easier to handle. In those moments where the next sentence, paragraph, or scene isn’t coming, I turn away from my draft toward the outlining exercises in John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story.

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Nicholas Mancusi

8.1.19

“I find that the hardest work of my writing is done in my subconscious brain, somewhere in the back of my skull far out of the reach of my control. So if I am stuck, if the proper image or plot point has not yet been presented to me, it usually means that other brain functions are in the way, namely the nervous, anxious, day-to-day processes required for moving throughout the world.

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Amanda Lee Koe

7.25.19

“Taking a spin through the Smiths album Hatful of Hollow is one of the things I allow myself when faced with troubles on the page. It’s not so much to inspire as to reset. There’s a relaxing familiarity in coming back to songs that were on heavy rotation for me growing up as a teenage misfit in Singapore. The listening experience is less urgent now, and functions more as a calmative in retracing that line from Morrissey through to Oscar Wilde (whom Morrissey adored growing up as a teenage misfit in Manchester).

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