The Inspiration Project

What is the inspiration for your Creative Writing MFA website and book?

Tom Kealey: It’s hard to remember. You’ve written books before, Jeffrey, so you know: You spend all this time on them, months and months, then when they’re finally published you think: Did I really write that? I can hardly remember the process.

What I do remember is that I had a worksheet about MFA programs for my students. It was just a one-page introduction about how to find information about graduate creative writing programs: how to apply for them, what criteria to use in selecting them, how to make the most of them when you’re there, etc. etc. One day while printing it out for a new class I thought: Here’s an outline for a book. Though I probably won’t ever write it.

But I’d just finished a novel. A novel that I really didn’t like. It was a failed experiment. It happens. I needed a win. I thought I could write the MFA book. So I wrote an introduction. It came out pretty easily. I found I had a lot to talk about. Three things occurred to me: 1. I know a lot about this, 2. The students I’ve spoken with don’t know anything about this, and 3. When I was applying to programs in 1998, I didn’t know squat either.

There’s no book out there that’s a How-To about applying to programs, so I knew I could sell the book.

I wrote an outline after that. I added some things later, but that outline is basically how the book turned out. After I finished, I was talking with Katharine Noel, my office mate at Stanford, and I mentioned I was thinking about writing this book. She said, "That’s a great idea, and you’re definitely the one to write it."

That meant a lot to me throughout the process. That someone else thought that I was the one to do it. We always think that we write on an island, and we actually do the writing on an island. But the writing process itself is a community effort. We need feedback — both positive and negative — and we need people who will help us in the enthusiasm and perseverance departments.

I wrote the whole thing while only talking with one other person about it. Her name is Johanna Foster, and she is a friend of a friend. She was applying to programs. She kept calling me and asking me questions about the process. She always said, "Sorry I’m bothering you about this," but she was a huge help for the book. I could see more clearly what other people didn’t know, and what they’d want in a book like the one I was writing.

After I wrote all the way through, I started doing interviews with students, teachers, and program directors. In retrospect, it was important that I waited to talk with them. I would’ve had too many voices in my head otherwise. I wrote down how I saw things. Then I spoke with other people and included their quotes in the book. I also changed things I’d written based on what they’d said. The important thing: I changed these things after I wrote them, and not while I was thinking about writing them.

Now that it’s out, I’m pretty happy with the book. It’s starting to get some good reviews. I started The MFA Blog, and I answer questions on there from prospective students. It’s basically a forum for their thoughts and questions. I learn from them too. It’s really helped build an audience for the book, but that’s not why I started it. I started it because I know some things about MFA programs, more than most people. And I’d like to learn more. The Blog is like a second edition of the book. I get to fill in any gaps I’d left out.

What was the inspiration for your new novel Johnny Red?

David Barringer: An ad parody. I was helping a friend make a magazine as a gift for his girlfriend, and we used ad parodies as filler. I made up an ad hyping a prison memoir written by an inmate of the Sweetachewa County Poultry Farm, published by Fowl Publishers of Chicken, Alaska. For some odd reason, the idea of writing a prison memoir from the point of view of a rooster stuck with me, and I wrote just to get the ideas out of my head.

While the idea came from that ad parody, I didn’t have to stick with it. I could’ve switched to dogs in a pound, fish in an aquarium, animals in a zoo. This is the stuff of animated film. (In fact, after I wrote the first draft and started sending it to agents, the movie Chicken Run came out; now that my novel is published, the movie Chicken Little is about to come out.) I had a hard time justifying my decision to stick with chickens, but I was tempted by the freedom to imagine an entire fictional world, to create it and its inhabitants without worrying about any future reader saying, "People don’t live like that. People don’t talk like that."

Writing about talking roosters also has a long literary history. When I discovered that Chaucer wrote about the rooster Chauntecleer and his hen Pertelote in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” I thought, "Ah, hell." And so I kept digging and found roosters everywhere in literature and religion: ancient Egypt and Rome, in Celtic legend and the Gnostic texts, the Bible and the Koran, Confucius, Rabelais, Cervantes, on and on. It seemed I wasn’t crazy.

Read more about Barringer’s Johnny Red here.

What was your inspiration for the Four Hundred Words project?

Being 22 and 23 a couple years ago and having no idea what direction to point myself in after college. Feeling simultaneously mind-boggled by all the choices supposedly out there, and demoralized by the setbacks: like the way that a 4-year degree didn’t protect me from not being able to get a coffee shop job in Portland, OR in the 2002 economic slump. I became keenly interested in other peoples’ life stories, like maybe there were answers in there somewhere for me.

Read the full interview with Sharpe here.

What was your inspiration for Venus at the start, and how did it evolve as time went on?

My very initial inspiration to start Venus was just having a ton of creative energy — I was 19 years old and wanted to make something. Over time, a lot of my inspirations come from other people’s energy. I get really excited about all the amazing women making great music, films, art, and running their own businesses.

Read the full interview with Schroeder here.

What was your inspiration for Job Hopper?

Ayun Halliday: When No Touch Monkey came out, everyone kept asking how I managed to finance the travels depicted therein, which started me thinking about all the crappy jobs I held in my twenties.

What inspiration guided this collection for you?

Rachel Kramer Bussel: Mostly my own experiences with spanking. I tried to make sure the stories lived up to the actual level of hotness spanking can provide for both the spanker and spankee. I wanted stories that would be accessible to those who’d never tried spanking as well as erotic for people who are already dedicated spankophiles. I think spanking is one of those activities lots of people have tried, or are curious about, and while this book isn’t a how-to, hopefully it can show the varying ways people respond to spanking, and that men and women can spank and get spanked, and it can be part of or a prelude to sex, or a satisfying act in and of itself. I wanted a book that would be the next best thing to actually receiving or giving a spanking, and I think I got that.

Read the full interview with Rachel here.

I’m beginning a new section on this site called The Inspiration Project. Similar to The Influences Project, where I ask project-makers which writer or artist has most influenced their work, The Inspiration Project will ask project-makers to explore and discuss what inspired a particular project.

I’m always thinking about inspiration, the funny ways it can hit, the search for it, where it comes from, how to cultivate it. Thinking about it again today reminded me of a short essay I wrote back in 1997, which I am posting below.

If you’re so inclined, please post a comment about something that has recently inspired you.

We Are The Music Makers
(written in 1997, upon publication of a now defunct zine)

Something that I’ve been thinking about lately is inspiration. What makes someone do something, first, and then what makes someone do something new and different and totally amazing. It’s all tied into a million things, but on a simple level, you can break it down to inspiration.

I have to diligently search for inspiration. Or do I? That’s what I’ve been analyzing, trying to see how and where I get my inspiration.

Given my recent publishing project, which focuses on independent projects, I have been paying close attention to information in the newspaper, on the web, in a magazine, on the radio or television, about projects people have created. And I have found that hearing about, seeing, or reading about other people’s projects is an incredible source of inspiration for me.

Initially, I sometimes get outright jealous, even bitter, that someone else has created some great project and all I get to do is participate as a ticket buyer or onlooker.

But once I rise above such inner turmoil, knowing full well that it comes from my own self-doubt and insecurities, I let the projects of other people fuel my energy and ideas and focus so that I, too, create projects. In short, I am inspired.

Seeing all the zines at Cody’s Books or Naked Eye, checking out an independent label’s website and seeing that it has a huge roster of bands, seeing a film by an independent filmmaker, either on video or at a movie theatre. Maybe I’m just reading the newspaper and I’ll see an ad for a "CD release party" for a band that I’ve never heard about before. All of these things inspire me.

And then there are things like that scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, when the little bratty girl tells Willy Wonka that there’s no such thing as a "snozberry." Willy Wonka is startled by the little girl’s comment. He then leans over and whispers into her ear: "We are the music makers. And we are the dreamers of the dream." I love that fucking scene. I find total inspiration in those words. We are the music makers. And we are the dreamers of the dream.

I recently read an article in the New Yorker about Egon Schiele, an artist with a distinct and unique technique, who shook up the art scene, was admired and loathed, formed an influential art group, had successful shows, and created a prolific body of beautiful, engaging, controversial work. Not until almost the end of the article is the artist’s age mentioned. He died at 28. I have to find a balance between feelings of shock, jealousy, and inspiration when I read about such people.

I went to see this woman speak about her son, Dan Eldon. She put together a book of excerpts from his journal, which were photo-based and very artistic. Dan Eldon was a photographer and did all kinds of work in Africa. His photojournalism appeared in numerous major magazines. He ended up getting stoned to death by an angry mob while he was trying to photograph the results of a bombing. He was 22. Dan Eldon’s book is called The Journey is the Destination. Check it out the next time you are in a bookstore. Dan Eldon’s story is a reminder that we don’t have forever to find our inspiration, that we cannot put off until tomorrow what can be done today, because there may not be a tomorrow. Dan Eldon, even at his untimely death at 22, had a wealth inspiration. His journals are the proof.

The other night I heard this guy give a talk about the music industry, and he was discussing the different ways in which local, independent bands get people to come to their shows. He said that one band he knows made a cassette tape consisting of two songs from their album. Instead of just passing out flyers, this band passed out these tapes to people. When a band member gave the tape to someone, he said, "come to our show, bring this tape to the door, and you’ll get in free." The band ended up getting 80 tapes back, which it then used to promote its next show.

On the radio I heard this guy talk about his new literary journal on the web. While talking about his site, he mentioned this other person who I’ve known since college, who also has a literary journal on the web. The conversation made me say to myself, I want a literary journal on the web.

Discovering inspiration is an ability buried so deeply within some people that they never find it. But really all you have to do is look around, listen, take a closer look at that article you are reading. It’s there, behind you, at the picture you will see later on today. It’s a fleeting memory, something your friend says, an image that makes you angry. It’s within you already, waiting to be tapped, triggered by happenstance or years of study, ready to make a difference.

Again, please post a comment about something that has recently inspired YOU.