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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.
I remember the dramatic moments that nearly stopped me as I wrote my first story collection. After a tough manuscript review with a top-notch editor, I dove, seemingly irretrievably, into deep despair. I lost belief in myself. I mean, it was bad. Days dragged into weeks, my desk uninhabited.
When I’m slightly stuck in my writing, I do the dishes; when I’m medium stuck, I think of life’s terrible brevity; when I’m very stuck, I write fanfiction. Writer’s block comes from so many places. As a young person, I thought that it was just an excuse people made.
When caught in the tangles of a creative dead end, I resort to the time-tested act of walking. Our bodies are built in such a way that we’re very efficient at walking, allowing most of us to not actively think about how to put one foot in front of the other.
I’m at the pet store buying dog food and the counter is full of tarantulas. Seven of them, stacked in sturdy plastic bins with airholes punched along the tops, tiny nightmares from some haunted bulk foods department.
Poets should watch This Is Spinal Tap more often. Watching it again after having not seen it for a couple of decades, I was struck by how much fun those guys were having.
I’d like to say I’m a daily writer, but as a working mom, I can’t always make it to the page, and certainly not as my most productive or best self.
When I get stuck these days, the first thing I do is be gentle with myself and stay calm. I remind myself that I had times like these, when I feared I would never write anything again. And sometimes those times were uncomfortably long. But, I wrote again.
“I read an interview with the writer and journalist Lawrence Wright around ten, perhaps fifteen, years ago. Wright was asked what he did when he got ‘knotted up’ during the day, and he said that he would go for a run.
“I tell my creative writing students this: No one can write the story you have inside of you. No one.
