David Mitchell on How to Write: ‘Neglect Everything Else’
The Cloud Atlas author keeps a James Wright poem as a reminder to live in the now.
By Heart
Authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature.
Jeff Tweedy's Subconscious Songwriting
The Wilco singer says Daniel Johnston epitomizes his mostly instinctual creative process.
Write Like the Handmaid
Novelist Edan Lepucki looks to the subversive metaphors in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale for lessons in channeling characters' weird, rebellious spirits.
Envision the Novel Like a Museum
Using the guard-turned-vandal in The Heart So White as his guide, author Ben Lerner writes books in which characters interact with art, and occasionally try to set it on fire.
Writers Should Examine Everything, Even the Supermarket
Author Stephan Eirik Clark returns to Don DeLillo's White Noise for lessons in interrogating American culture.
Honest Writing Is Funny Writing
Memoirist Sean Wilsey says he knows he's finished with a story when it makes him laugh.
The Miracle of Writing
A Midsummer Night's Dream got it right, Richard Bausch says: Authors must find a way to turn nothing into something.
Confronting Reality by Reading Fantasy
Author Lev Grossman says C.S. Lewis taught him that in fiction, stepping into magical realms means encountering earthly concerns in transfigured form.
Don't Write for the Barbarians
Hot Chip singer Alexis Taylor explains why he tries to forget critics—and his own self-consciousness—when creating.
Writers Can Do Anything
William T. Vollmann, author of Last Stories and Other Stories, explains why he works by an assassin's credo: "Nothing is true; all is permissible."