Leslie Schwartz
“Mary Oliver used to walk in the woods with a notebook. Walking so inspired her that she kept pens in the trees so if an idea or thought came to her, she’d be able to stop and write it down.
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.
Stephen Markley
“I tend not to need too much motivation or inspiration, but I do try to make sure I’m having good weird adventures each and every year. Sometimes that means traveling to a new place or imbibing a new psychedelic substance or forcing a new interesting person to be my lifelong friend.
Mia Ayumi Malhotra
“As the mother of young children, the hours I spend working on poems are unaccountably precious. My husband and I exert huge amounts of energy to craft a family life that leaves space for my work, and after all that effort, I have no choice but to sit down and write.
Alexia Arthurs
“For me, the struggle to move forward in my writing tends to be an issue with the characters in my short stories. I don’t know them well enough. The writing feels forced, labored. I step away from my computer.
Emily Sieu Liebowitz
“Someone—a teacher of mine, though I am not sure who—told me that once you know what you’re doing in writing, you have to give up and move on.
Jane Delury
“When I started to work on my first book, The Balcony, I took down the painting that had been hanging on the wall by my desk and replaced it with a taped photocopy of Judy Dater’s 1974 photograph ‘Imogen and Twinka at Yosemite.’ In that photograph, the ninety-year-old photographer Imogen C
Rachel Heng
“When the writing gets away from me, it’s rarely something creative that brings it back. Feeling stuck for me usually means being in a state of creative surfeit, where I want nothing to do with stories at all. In these moments I like reading articles filled with statistics.
Randall Klein
“When I feel genuinely stuck in my writing, I find that it’s often because I’m bored.
R. O. Kwon
“I have to listen to music while I write, and usually I play just one song at a time. I repeat it all day, often for weeks on end. Months, even. There’s one song that I replayed up to 30,000 times during the ten years I was writing The Incendiaries.
Jamel Brinkley
“I’m beginning to realize that the primary engine of my writing may be loneliness. I don’t want to recommend loneliness, however. So what I’ll say is that there are certain works I return to that make me want to write, that never fail to punch me in the gut and wash out my eyes.