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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.
“As a research tool, the Internet is the best thing to happen to writers since the invention of the modern library. On the other hand, it can be a colossal time-suck and an addictive distraction for many writers—myself included. One of our most important challenges, then, is negotiating the use of technology in our daily writing practice.
“What works to drive me to write is probably so idiosyncratic that it might not be generally useful, but it’s been my way of finding the motivation and the passion to put pen to paper. Sure, I like the hot afternoon walks in the hills of Altadena with my dog
“My cures for writer’s block are alarmingly pragmatic and physical. So pragmatic that they arrange themselves in list form! To wit: 1. Get up and walk around. A few years ago, I realized that the solutions to most of my writing problems would come to me in the bathroom.
The very worst times in my life have been marked by silence: times when I wasn’t allowed to write, or couldn’t write, or when language completely failed me. I didn’t write a word, beyond e-mails or Facebook status updates, for nearly two years after I finished graduate school.
“I do various things to keep the muse going, but mostly, I read, read, read! I make myself the ‘expert’ of the particular form I am attempting. I am a big poetry nerd and proud of it! The history of literature is rich and various. The more rigorous we are in our practice, the more interesting our poems will be.
“In the morning when I walk to work, I try to think up stories for everything I see along the way. Three birds sitting on a bag of trash behind the used record store. A waterlogged ball cap in a parking lot.
“Before Knockemstiff made him famous, my friend Donald Ray Pollock came home from work at the paper mill, rolled a page into his typewriter, and began to copy, word by word, passages by writers he admired. One day Raymond Carver, the next day Cormac McCarthy, the next day Dawn Powell, the next day Larry Brown. This, he told me, was the bulk of his writerly education.
“Earlier this year while I was finishing my novel, I was reading Dani Shapiro’s wonderful book, Still Writing. I swear every page was like another delicious choice in an intellectual, emotional, and creative buffet. I especially love the section on ‘Shimmer,’ which is what Shapiro calls the unmistakable, indelible epiphany a writer has when she discovers her subject matter.
“As both a poet and clinical psychologist with a therapy practice, I tend to lose time in a very cerebral world. Concrete, really physical activities help me emerge from a more linear modality toward an enlivened creativity.
“Sometimes I do this thing where I convince myself that writing is really hard. I bang my head on the desk. I suffer and moan. When I am being silly and insufferable like this, the only remedy is to listen to the Band. More specifically: to listen to Levon Helm, a man I think of as a kind of patron saint for my writing life.
