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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.
“Writing is wrestling. With time, with space, with memory. With confidence, sentences, syntax. With children, pets, partners, dinner. Essays have either gushed out of me, fire hydrant style, or I have coaxed and pulled at them painstakingly, like a parasitic worm from my ankle.
“I started dream journaling under lockdown, recording dreams because they seemed to be getting more vivid. Even though very little of this writing made it into a poem or anything I’d put into a book, it was a good way to keep my writing muscles ready.
“I’ve guided rafting trips for twelve seasons during my summers off as a writing professor. Guiding has taught me to seek the balance between pressure and calm, both on and off the river.
“There are many avenues I turn to when I’m stuck in my writing—music, Edgar Allan Poe, the work of Gustave Doré, going for a long walk by whatever body of water I can find—but my main inspiration comes from immersing myself in mythology.
“When I hit that point where a wall is met with my writing, the sensation is gone and the train is gone, and my immediate environs lose their contemplative harmony. My focus is broken, so I find some pleasure.
“When I’m stuck, my breath becomes shallow. My shoulders and back stiffen. I squint and try to force my brain to produce the correct words. My brain refuses, and I become frustrated. I reach for distractions—my phone, the hunger I don’t feel but insist upon. I make elaborate sandwiches.
“What I try to focus on most during the process of writing is a sense of pleasure, especially in the early drafting stage. Sometimes I take a walk or listen to music, which helps the visions. It starts with an image or vision. I like to walk through the desert.
“When I’m slowly sinking in the quicksand of writing troubles (I don’t know what to write! This story’s going nowhere! I’m an impostor! I can’t manage all this contradictory feedback!), my tree branch is poetry.
“Poetry has become my daily prayer ritual, my practice, and my religion. Every day the music of R. Carlos Nakai and words of Ntozake Shange bring me to my writing table. There, I fancy myself a vast ocean tumbling as far as the eye can see.
“When I’m stuck, I crave a literal remedy: motion. On days when a character refuses to untangle, or my head feels sunk in a soup of possibilities, I’ll go for a bike ride.
