Jump to navigation Skip to content
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.
“What keeps language alive for me is ritual and play. When my pen slows, I don’t treat it as a problem. Stillness is necessary. I listen, let things pass, and try to accept all of life, including the stuck parts. Sitting helps me do that. Fifteen minutes a day.
“Since moving back home to Columbus, Ohio, I’ve had to reformat my writing time and how to make the best use of the moments when I find myself running up against a block, or several blocks.
“When I started university, I wanted to be an art historian and classicist, I thought my first book would be about Greek sculptures, not a work of fiction.
“I was a martial artist before I was a writer. It’s absurd: kicking and punching the air daily, for hours, perfecting your technique for an encounter that probably won’t happen, and definitely not in that sequence.
“My first semester of college, I took a class called ‘The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships.’ It wasn’t what I’d expected—we didn’t have a traditional textbook, didn’t have desks.
Living in the country affords me time and space, along with a healthy cardiovascular system from shoveling my own driveway over the six months that winter lasts. What I lack, however, is a physical writing community I can celebrate or commiserate with during the work’s many ups and downs.
“What I say here might be counterintuitive. If I am looking for writing inspiration, I do the opposite: I refuse writing (easy to do if one is busy). In fact, I try and refuse the impulse to write for as long as possible until I feel that I am physically going to puncture and blow up.
“Whenever I find myself at a literary crossroads, I reach for my Tarot deck. In my regular life, I’m a staunch scientific materialist (I even contribute debunking articles to skeptical outlets); but in my creative life, I’m an unqualified mystic.
“When I was young, I had a lot of anxiety about getting lost. I asked my mom when we went somewhere if she knew where we were—do you have the map? She’d pat the fuel gauge, tell me she had enough gas and she was sure of where we were going.
“In the poem ‘He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do,’ Philip Levine says: ‘Fact is, silence is the perfect water: / unlike rain it falls from no clouds….’ I attach to this Denise Levertov’s idea that a poet must be brought to speech—what we write must be felt so intensely, it ‘
