Benjamin Percy
“When I push weights around, I push words around. I usually hit the gym in the afternoon, and when I do, I think about the story or chapter I was working on that morning.
Carol Moldaw
“On a narrow strip of cork board, among news clippings and postcards, is a small vellum-colored paper square, printed by the artist Tom Ashcraft, that has inspired me for many years.
Jacob Ritari
“As a rule of comedy combining something cute with something sinister is good for a laugh, and the logic is the same as the real-life behavior
Aimee Bender
“Rules. I'm a big believer in structure, and the idea that creativity loosens up when constrained a bit.
Brando Skyhorse
“Never start writing in a bad mood—makes it too easy to quit before you get going.
Patricia Engel
“I’ve been reading the journals of Albert Camus since I was thirteen years old and his words have become my most faithful and intimate companions.
Joshua Ferris
“I take inspiration from the subtle daily forecasting of death. This should be impetus for anyone to get off his ass. Work is why we're here, and to waste an hour of any day, fretting or worrying or procrastinating, is to release into the air the odor of death. Emerson said, ‘To fill the hour—that is happiness.’ I try to fill the hour. And by filling the hour, the ones that follow come easier. Inspiration, then, is its own inspiration. But I must beware of why I work.
Jean Valentine
“Sometimes typos can be helpful. Looking at a poem in a language you can’t read, and working from the sounds. Taping poems on the wall and leaving them there for days—maybe something will come, just from looking at them, over time. Words from a dream. Within the last few months I heard: ‘Will it solve itself?’ And the answer: ‘When you are gone.’ I took this to mean: When the ‘I’ who is trying to solve it (whatever ‘it’ is) backs off.”
—Jean Valentine, author of Break the Glass (Copper Canyon Press, 2010)
Glenn Taylor
“As Jerome Washington wrote, 'The blues is our antidote.’ So I listen. Blues doctors like Neal Pattman inspire something in a writer’s blood. Anyone who can play harmonica like he can, with one arm no less, will get me going. And inevitably my sons will hear 'Momma Whoopin’ Blues’ and start asking questions. I show them the CD cover and they ask more questions and I explain how he lost his arm in a wagon wheel accident as a boy and they ask even more questions.
Travis Nichols
“To get my mind ready for writing, I try to sit quietly and stare at nothing for ten minutes. It clears away the Salt-n-Pepa lyrics and staircase wit that have been clogging up the channels. After the silence, if I’m at a critical juncture, I then listen to records from Sublime Frequencies—a label specializing in a kind of post-field recording ethnomusicology—and try to transcribe what I hear. This doesn’t often result in work for the ages, but it’s a good reminder that the best writing comes from outside.”