1) Poetry. If you got in this for language, a love pure and passionate for the magic of creating images and capturing ideas in words, there is nothing like poetry to stimulate the senses and start the flow. Other sources of language to trip the language fantastic include: reading down the margin of a book, magazine or newspaper, reading only the first (or last) word on each line. Reading the first five or six words at random where your finger lands when you point to a page.

2) Film footage run silent. Eileen Myles made us do this in a class she taught years ago in S.F. Write to what you see. Narrate the tale on the screen that unscrolls silently before you. Still photographs and other images can also inspire. I remember A.M. Holmes, another teacher of mine, saying that she created albums for her books, pictures culled from estate sales and other finds. If a picture is worth a thousand words, might it not generate that many in you?

3) Music. Some people love to write to music–Angie is one, and she DJs her writing sessions for particular effects and moods. I can write among a lot of noise, in cafes for example, but I don’t necessarily tap into the music around me. I am more likely to shut it out. But there are, of course, songs that move me, that can make me cry in grocery stores (like Dar Williams “When I was a Boy,” just for example) and songs that call up whole eras in my life (from Prince to Joni Mitchell). Even thinking about songs can spur images. “Sister Christian” one night at a bar where I kissed a friend up against the door. Long. Time. Ago.

What inspires you? What rituals, habits, situations have you created or nurtured to be able to connect to inspiration when you need it? How do you generate or develop ideas for your writing?