Of all the craft books I’ve read in my life, perhaps none have stuck with me quite as clearly as the assertion, at the beginning of Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook, that, rather than waiting for inspiration to strike, an aspiring writer must sit down regularly for an appointment with the muse. If you do this, Oliver suggests, inspiration will follow: “if you are reliably there, it begins to show itself—soon it begins to arrive when you do.” And if not, “if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive,” the inspiration you’re seeking “will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all.”
Even twenty years past the introduction to poetry class in which I first read Oliver’s book, I don’t think this is necessarily bad advice. I don’t write every day, as some scolds insist you must to be a real writer, whatever that means, but I do write regularly, and I’ve got a notebook and a pen stashed in every purse, my gym bag, and my glove compartment, so I can catch inspiration whenever it does strike. (My newsletter, Write More, Be Less Careful, is full of tips for scratching out time to write in the midst of a busy life.)
But what happens when you sit down to write and inspiration doesn’t follow? What do you do when you’ve dutifully held up your side of the bargain and that creative spark remains elusive?
Below, I’ve rounded up a collection of books that will spark your creativity and make you want to write. They mostly aren’t craft books in the conventional sense—they’re less about learning about line breaks or point of view and more about how to seize on unlikely sources of inspiration and crack open your brain to make space for creative work.
Make Your Art No Matter What: Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles by Beth Pickens
In Make Your Art No Matter What, Pickens, a therapist and artist coach, guides readers through exercises to overcome common creative hurdles, ranging from the philosophical like time, fear, and other people, to the downright practical, including money and marketing. I interviewed Pickens, a therapist and artist coach, when her book first came out in the summer of 2021, and it’s has remained a warm source of encouragement since then. (It was that interview with Beth that inspired me to finally stop cackling nervously about how anxious I was about the business and self-promotion arm of writing and actually find a therapist, which helped enormously, in case anyone else needs a nudge to stop following therapists on Instagram and see one in real life.) Like a good therapist, she’s sympathetic to your struggles—and she’s also got lots of great resources to help you make your art and get out of your own way.
Syllabus: Notes From An Accidental Professor and Making Comics by Lynda Berry
Even—or maybe especially if—you’re someone who thinks of yourself as “not artistic,” the exercises in Lynda Barry’s books will likely unlock something in your creative brain. Syllabus: Notes From An Accidental Professor, provides a peek into Barry’s classroom at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where she’s an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity, and the follow-up, Making Comics, includes exercises like “Scribble Monster Jam” that can be done in a group as a round robin or on your own. Several of her exercises pair drawing with narrative, a combination that will likely prove fruitful for lots of writers. What I love about Barry’s work is her insistence on practice and playfulness. Once we’ve abandoned something because we fear we’re bad at it, Barry writes, “a certain capacity of the mind is shuttered.” Barry’s exercises point the way toward cracking that creative capacity open again. Even if you, like me, never manage to make a piece of real art through her exercises, there’s something about working visually that can shake out new ideas.
Gathering Voices: Creating a Community-Based Poetry Workshop by Marty McConnell
So often, our image of the writer is someone weeping into their notebook alone, and Marty McConnell’s Gathering Voices provides a useful counter to this image of the solitary artist, reminding us that writing doesn’t have to be a lonely pursuit. Her book, a collection of poems and writing exercises meant to be used in community-based poetry workshops, provides lots of points of entry for collaborative writing and discussion. McConnell developed the Gathering Voices approach through nearly twenty years of creating community writing workshops, including The louderARTS Project in New York and Vox Ferus in Chicago. The exercises, based on poems by Ocean Vuong, Terrance Hayes, Jericho Brown, and more, focus on curiosity, careful reading, and experimentation. Each poem is followed by a series of discussion questions that are open-ended enough to be accessible to even new readers of poetry an exercise related the poem. The exercise that’s paired with Kwame Dawes’s “Death: Baron Samedi,” for example, asks writers to “invent a minor god, deity or demon” then use a Mad Libs-kind of structure to begin their freewrite. It sounds like a little wacky, but it’s a mix of structure and freedom that can be really generative. You could use these exercises with your writing group or just pick them up for your own practice and be reminded that, even if it’s just you and your notebook right now, you’re not actually alone.
1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round by Jami Attenberg
Like many writers, I found Jami Attenberg on twitter through the #1000words project, in which writers sign up to get a daily email of encouragement and write 1000 words a day for 14 days. Since Attenberg began the project in the summer of 2018, it’s grown to a newsletter, Craft Talk, with more than 37,000 subscribers and a book, published this past January. The magic of the #1000words project is the sense of companionship, that even as you’re sitting down at your desk alone, you can also feel writers all around the world settling in for the same word work. On social media and in the comments on the newsletter, writers chime in to share their word counts, celebrate little breakthroughs, and commiserate on tough days. The book, which includes essays by Attenberg and contributors including Roxane Gay, Lauren Groff, Celeste Ng, Carmen Maria Machado, and more on topics ranging from making writing friends to handling distractions and persisting through rejection, captures that energy. The book works best, I’ve found, as a friendly companion to a writing practice. I keep mine on my desk and flip through it when I need a little burst of encouragement or a reminder to get back to work.
You MUST Use The Word Smoothie: A Craft Essay in 50 Writing Prompts by Chen Chen
In the introduction to this collection, available as a free digital download in Sundress’s Craft Chaps series, Chen writes that he hopes the prompts will “spark some unexpected new writing for you.” Across the sections, which Chen describes as “potential windows,” readers will find prompts ranging from “Write more love poems” to “Rest” and “If you can afford to: go to therapy. (Art can be therapeutic, but is not a substitute for therapy.)” It’s hard to write about this set of prompts without feeling like I’m either giving away the pleasure of its many surprises or making light of how it interweaves the playful and the politically attuned. Perhaps it will be enough to say that these prompts, either worked through individually as you’re inspired, or taken up as a whole across several weeks of writing, will take you on a journey from rest to rage and back.
The Book of Delights and The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay
Ross Gay’s Book of Delights and Book of (More) Delights are all about finding delight in the everyday. The brief essays in these two books, which cover experiences ranging from carrying a tomato on a plane and pulling carrots to watching two people share a bag, feel like a kind of field guide to the pleasures of re-engaging with the world around us. (If you haven’t had the chance to see Ross Gay read in person, check out this brief video of him reading “Tomato on a Plane” so you can get that voice and smile in your mind and carry it with you as you read. And then see him read in person the next chance you get!) Though they’re not exercises, reading these essays always inspires me to look for more delight in my own life. Read a couple, then use the guidelines he created—“write them daily, write them quickly, and write them by hand”—to start crafting your own delights.
Millions of Suns: On Writing and Life by Sharon Fagan McDermott and M. C. Benner Dixon
Millions of Suns is the closest thing in this collection to a conventional craft book, but it distinguishes itself within that category through its expansive approach. Each chapter features a pair of essays written by McDermott and Dixon, followed by a range of prompts that are sure to spark your creative energy. It’s useful for writers working in genres from poetry to prose, and its chapters include topics ranging from imagery and inspiration to metaphor, structure, and revision. It ends not with the advice on publishing or facing rejection or finding a writing group that often seems to end craft books, but with a chapter on Beauty, and McDermott’s essay, which suggests that “beauty is a projection and a reality, both.” The book begins by insisting that “there is joy in writing,” and the essays and writing prompts it includes point the way toward cultivating more of that joy in your own creative life.
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