inspiration
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An Ethnography of the Self: Talking with Morgan Parker
Morgan Parker discusses her writing process, approaching an idea from various forms, and how moving from NYC to L.A. has changed her work.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #98: Nicky Nodjoumi
Though some readers of The Rumpus may not have heard of Nicky Nodjoumi, in his native Iran he has achieved the status of a rock star.
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Weekly Geekery
If a weasel can shut down the Large Hadron Collider, we can finish that novel. And barring any more weasel problems, the future of physics is very exciting. Did you celebrate email debt forgiveness day? Fake hackers make more money…
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The Rumpus Interview with Robyn Schiff
Robyn Schiff talks about her collection A Woman of Property, the long con of “owning” land, her passion for early novels, how motherhood changed her poetry, and the generative powers of form.
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Vonnegut’s Secret Weapon
Without his wife Jane’s faith and encouragement in his writing, it’s highly likely we wouldn’t know Kurt Vonnegut’s name from Adam. The New Yorker explores Jane’s influence on her husband throughout his career as an author. Kurt was more pragmatic,…
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Debut Novelists and the Books That Shaped Them
Lit Hub asked the seven first-time novelists shortlisted for the 2015 Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize what book inspired them to become the authors they are today. Sophie McManus says, I was ten and reading A Wizard of Earthsea…
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Dave Davies on Inspiration
The Kinks’s Dave Davies took a minute out of his Ripping Up New York City tour to talk to LA Record about inspiration. “It’s a kind of process—I find melancholery really really useful,” Davies said. “It’s a way of remembering…
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The Struggle for Literary Inspiration
Few writers are as prolific as Joyce Carol Oates, and over at the New York Review of Books, she masterfully tackles the concept of inspiration throughout an impressive span of literary history, covering Plato, Dickinson, Joyce, Woolf, James. Her take?…
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It’s Hard Out Here for a Poet
Years ago, I had this great photo of a storm spiral over Antarctica. It was a full-page photo I ripped out of a magazine, probably a National Geographic, and which I eventually lost somewhere. But I think of it every…
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The Poetic Power of Pedestrians
By merely wandering, the dérivist frustrates the spatial logic of capitalism, in the process discovering new currents, fissures, and vortices of possibility within a deeply familiar space. Wandering and drifting have long been championed as means of inspiration, but how…
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Grief Turned Into Writing
Trauma brought me to the page, it is that simple. It’s a familiar story to hear writers becoming inspired over suffering, but it’s rare to read about it with precision. Over at The Millions, Lidia Yuknavitch writes with startling clarity…
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F*** the Myth of Motivation
The motivation crisis is different for each place on the path, but it is as toxic as it is ubiquitous.