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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 wrote my debut story collection, Good Women, I had moments where I ran into walls of uncertainty and froze. At these roadblocks, perfectionism began to guide me rather than intuition or craft. I balked. I felt pressure to search for something missing, something extraordinary.
When I’m stuck, I let myself be stuck. I don’t put imperatives on how many pages I need to generate or what being a writer looks like. I’ve learned not to fixate on the stuck-ness. I allow myself the breath and time to simply not write. So much of writing to me is about patience and allowance.
I sort of deal with obsessions when it comes to reading poetry and the creation of poetry. At any given time, I have a poem or two that I am drawn to on an emotional and sometimes ineffable level, in which I reread and return to the poem multiple times a week.
In the early 1990s, I moved to Berlin, Germany, fresh out of a failed marriage, heartbroken and friendless.
“I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees.” Perhaps no other lyric has enthralled and sparked my imagination more than Robert Johnson’s mournful plea in his song “Cross Road Blues.” When my debut novel, The Carnivale of Curiosities, was in its nascent stage, the first thing that I
It’s silly, but it’s honest: When I’m stuck, I play The Sims 4. Over the last few years, my academic job has stressed me to the point of stagnation in my poetry. I’ll sit down to write, with ideas and inspiration in my fingertips, and after an hour, nothing.
I am one who experiences frequent hypertensions and palpitations from a racing heart and mind, so I often find myself both activated and lost. Although these parts of me are quite realized and muscular, their speed and capacity to hold so much can feel staggering.
Too often, I am losing myself in my work. Sometimes that feels like all I am: someone who wakes up and writes and pushes himself to read difficult books, then goes to sleep and does it all over again the next day.
My debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, begins and ends with fruit. A line from the opening reads: “In the murky broth of yet another heartache, my mother cuts me slices of dragon fruit.” So much of my writing process is about nourishment—literally and metaphorically.
Maybe we write too much. Maybe that’s what these physical, emotional, and psychological roadblocks to story making are trying to tell us. Must we always be writing (especially those of us who love it and need it the most)?
