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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.
“When I’m stuck, it’s usually because I’ve been overwriting. That’s when I take a break and watch clips of stand-up comedians. Essayists and comedians are, in my opinion, doing pretty much the same work, but most of the time comedians do it better. I watch a lot of Louis C. K. and a lot of Patrice O’Neal. There’s one Richard Pryor bit where he talks about setting himself on fire while freebasing that is so stunningly open and vulnerable.
“I tend to work in bursts where I’ll write a lot of fairly polished work in a short amount of time. When I’m not in that mode, I use a notebook all the time to record what I see, read, think; to work out structural problems that are keeping me from writing; to take down ideas for future work.
“I have been preoccupied lately, to an alarming degree, by the creative process of collage. I spend most of my free time cutting out words from newspaper headlines and pictures from fifty-year-old magazines. Combining the stern, authoritative tone of ‘the News’ and the wholesome and charmingly hopeful images of fifties and sixties advertising (or that era’s glamorous photojournalism) makes for a jarring and often hilarious piece of art.
“Ideas come to me through my ear. I will hear a character’s voice before I can see her face or know anything about her circumstances. As long as the voice is talking, I am writing. But inevitably that voice starts to wane, and with it my ability to put words on the page.
“When I’m not working on a specific project, I write two hours before bed and I spend two hours in the morning trying to make at least one decent paragraph out of the mess I wrote before bed. I’ve become obsessed with paragraphs in my old age. I try to create one dope paragraph every other week and trust myself to organize those somewhat dope paragraphs into a revelatory piece that means something to someone somewhere.
“For inspiration I’ve found that doing something unrelated to writing serves me well, like viewing documentaries or people watching on a bus or train. Or, for example, I’ll assemble a book case, go for a walk, or do mundane chores around the house. These types of tasks give my brain quiet time to construct lines and make necessary associations before I ever get any words on paper.
“I have an almost religious belief that nonfiction is built from careful observation, which reveals that almost anything—from the tree outside the window, to a horrible sandwich, to a devastating life event—has some kind of meaningful system, or structure, to it. Sometimes that structure is defined by entropy, or resembles a Greek play, or is purely Freudian in nature.
“By 10 AM I’ve been writing for a few hours, and my mind’s muddled with sentences, so I go jogging. Like most people, I don’t enjoy exercising, and I welcome anything that distracts me from the fact that I’m breathing hard and my muscles hurt. I don’t think about individual sentences, but more the overall shape of the text I’m making.
“I reread constantly for inspiration. Seek: Reports From the Edges of America and Beyond by Denis Johnson stokes my curiosity. Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water reminds me to own my fierceness, to conjure it onto the page. I also look for synchronicities and act on them in my writing and in my life.
“When I’m stuck or feeling unmotivated, I turn to the drawers near my writing desk. They contain notes from past English classes and old spiral-bound journals.
