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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.
“I have an insatiable appetite for movies—they were my gateway to the creative world when I was a kid, long before books were. Books, I can’t live without books, but movies help my brain wrap around an idea, help me put it all into pictures that I can translate into words.
When I’m feeling stuck, on a chapter, on a character’s next move, I’ll have a destination in mind to clear my head. It’s usually the waterfront around sunset. But I always take a roundabout way,
“I haven’t found any particular thing to be a consistently reliable source of inspiration. If there’s any consistency, it’s that it’s always something different.
“I went to see the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998) in 2002. Sitting alone in the dark, I heard the opening notes of Philip Glass
“While finishing Summerlong, I found myself in perhaps the bleakest emotional landscape of my life, negotiating a blindsiding divorce with my wife of seventeen years.
“The logistical aspects of writing—figuring out how a character gets from point A to point B, or how two plotlines intersect—can spur anxiousness in me that leads to hours of avoidance. When I get to sections like these, I try to cook or bake something.
“The great chess and martial arts champion Josh Waitzkin talks about ‘stress and recovery’ in his book The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance (Free Press, 2007). I think this theory of balance can help a writer as much as it helps an athlete.
“I am a cultural carnivore, a dually satisfying and frustrating way to be in New York City, where a clone would be useful to see all the art, plays, films, music, and dance that I would otherwise miss.
“Whenever I get stuck writing a scene I like to talk it out with someone. Sitting alone for too long with a plot problem or character issue can drive you crazy. But if you talk about it with a friend,
“Write hungry. This is not to say that writing while full can't be its own version of wonderful, your body so saturated with almond paste cookies, bourbon, or love that the words fall from you like overripe fruit.
