Tobias Wolff
Inspirational Activity: Take notes about your childhood
Tobias Wolff had no plans to write a memoir before starting This Boy’s Life, but he kept so many notes about his childhood, moving around with his mother, that eventually the notes became an idea and that idea “chose” him, all he had to do was write it.
Haruki Murakami
Inspirational Activity: Get into a strict routine and exercise
When he’s writing a novel, Haruki Murakami gets up every morning at 4 am, works for five or six hours, runs 10 kilometers or swims 1500 meters (or both), reads for the rest of the day, and then goes to bed promptly at 9 pm. He holds this routine for six months to a year, using this repetition as mesmerism to stay inspired. (“I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”)
Herman Koch
Inspirational Activity: Do some field work
Alternative: Write drunk
When writing a novel, Herman Koch tries to get as close to his characters as possible. Once, while researching the main character of his novel Summer House with Swimming Pool (who is a doctor), he made an appointment with his own doctor specifically to make note of his presence in the office.
When in a rut, Koch takes Hemingway’s famous advice: “Write drunk, edit sober.” The first time Koch did this, he reread what he had written and allegedly thought “This is so good – I’m never able to write this well!” He got his idea for The Dinner, his breakthrough novel, “after having had a few beers on Christmas eve.”
Khaled Hosseini
Inspirational Activity: Watch the news
Khaled Hosseini saw a news story on TV in the spring of 1999 about the Taliban, which discussed the rules the Taliban had put on Afghan people. At one point, it mentioned that they had banned flying kites, which Hosseini had done many times as a boy in Kabul, so he sat down and wrote a 25-page short story, and left it for two years. Later, he found it in his garage in 2001 and turned it into The Kite Runner.