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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.
“While, like most writers, I gain all kinds of inspiration from reading and movies and art and music, what often inspires me most is silence and a dark room. I love to sit in a dark room, especially late at night, with nothing to distract me. I wait to see where my imagination might take me.
“Like lots of fiction writers, I rely on research to reduce the odds of embarrassing myself. I don’t want to, say, have the wrong flowers in bloom at the wrong time in the wrong place or get everything wrong about whales
“I’m a city girl. I was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and I’ve spent my entire adult life living in cities (Moscow, London, Amsterdam, New York, and now Washington again). I love big cities for the energy, the people-watching, the access to art and culture, the ability to feel anonymous.
“On Saturdays I go look at art, partly because I wish I had become a visual artist. I’m not looking for narrative work, just powerful images that will push me out of my storytelling head. Abstract artists like Thomas Nozkowski
“My list of creativity-stimulators is long.
“I recommend getting to know the time of day when you write best and guard it as zealously as possible. If you can, work day jobs that keep that time free. If that isn’t possible, which it often isn’t,
“Mary Shelley and Louise Bourgeois. All I have to do, and I could do this every day of my writing life for the rest of my life, is open up Frankenstein to any page, or open up my book of Louise Bourgeois drawings, and my gut-heart-strum is activated.
“Viewing visual art—works that deal with ripping off the polite skin of society—stimulates me. When in that process of discovery I return again and again to the paintings of Francis Bacon, de Kooning’s women,
“Before I was a writer, I was a traveler; as it turned out, almost all of my stories (and unfinished novels, and bad poems, and personal essays) evolved from journeying away from home. A misunderstanding on an oppressively hot, chaotic Bangkok street;
“I listen to music (with lyrics!) when I write, and I often need coffee and chocolate to get me into the chair. There’s all that, yes. But at the risk of sounding like an Om-loving yoga teacher,
