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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.
“For a short while, I worked in an archival library that holds the papers of major downtown artists like David Wojnarowicz. It felt overwhelming at first to be surrounded by so much evidence of genius. Then I found it meaningful, because it is momentous and very mundane at the same time.
“I try not to rely on inspiration in my writing life, but sometimes, when I need to escape the tyranny of my style and process, I try something that worked for Joan Didion. I type the inspired words of other people.
“When I was in my late twenties, I received a fellowship from a prominent New York theater company to write a play. It was, up to that point, the pinnacle of my success, and I treated it as such: reveling, rejoicing—and, because I was a novice, doing nothing.
“With each book I’ve written, there has been a companion piece of music. I listen to the song or composition cycle through on repeat until I’m in a sort of hypnotic state. This keeps me inspired. Sometimes the music is classical. Sometimes it’s not.
“We’re told that sitting is the new smoking. Well, I’m currently in the middle of a new book so I’m burning my way through several packs a day, Hemmingway style.
“I wouldn’t be the first writer to recommend this, I’m sure, but when I am stuck, I step away from my computer and pick up a pen.
“Whenever my writing snarls itself into a tangle, I always take the same approach—I carry that horrible knot to bed and quench the lamp. Then, I wait. In the dark, my drowsy mind probes that tangle, whirling under it and around it, nudging and poking, tugging at any slack.
“Do you have a written work you return to over and over, knowing as you reread it, you’ll return to it again? Is there a poem or essay, an article or story that, for you, is like a psalm?
“When stuck, I pull out a big plastic bin full of paper I have collected, my brain’s own cabinet of curiosities. Every time I read the newspaper or find something of interest on the web, I cut or print it out.
“When my writing stalls, it usually means that there is something that I need to write that I’ve chosen to avoid. I’ll do all the writerly things that one does in the thick of avoidance—read widely within and beyond my topic; indulge in craft books and actually do the exercises; go for walks with
