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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 know what I’m supposed to write: Get up early and write for two hours before the world rushes in. Yeah, right. Some prickly voice just piped up and tried to make me feel bad for not waking up at 4:00 AM so I could write for two or three hours before the baby wakes up.
“There’s this crumbling apartment building about five blocks away from my house. Brown bricks, a clearly unsafe staircase, and a permanent ‘for rent’ sign in the yard.
“Since childhood, I wanted to become a writer but was warned against it, so I abandoned my dream. I wasn’t able to return to that dream until I was thirty-three, therefore writing is sacred to me. I set aside time each day to write, regardless of how busy I am.
“I write in bursts, but when the epiphanic mechanism doesn’t trigger, I write letters. Writing and receiving letters puts me into a holy space. It feels like stepping into that small patch of cathedral light when that beam of light is maybe the only thing you believe in.
“When my motivation to write wanes, I listen to Stefan Rudnicki read George R. R.
“On most days I am up to run the dogs by six o’clock, so by eleven in the morning when I know for sure there are no new words for the page, I head out to the gym.
“There is and has always been significant talk and essaying about writing that halts as a result of overwork or child-rearing, yet I feel that there’s a lapse in this conversation around the issue of not-writing that happens as a result of heartbreak, or anticipated heartbreak.
“One of the most important pieces of busywork that I do as a poet is to keep a running anthology of my favorite poems. I have an actual manila folder where I gather these poems, and it contains, at any given time, up to a hundred poems.
“When I hit a wall in my writing, my first impulse is to try bashing my way through. I hunch and grit my teeth and commence an endless cycle of writing very laboriously, then cross out everything I’ve written and start anew.
“When I am stuck, I walk. I don’t wear earbuds or headphones when I walk, nor when I travel by train or bus, because I want all of my senses to be centrally alive to what’s around: the music that lurks in the crevices of city sounds, forest sounds, desert sounds.
