What inspires you to write?

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Collated Answers from WW interviews

Adrian Mead	I write because I have to. Never thought I'd say that as it sounds so wanky but it's true. I get edgy and down if I can't write or make something, so I am always working and happiest when I have a deadline. Some of my favourite jobs have been when it's all gone totally pear shaped because a writer has walked or been fired. You get the call to rush in and do rewrites. The pressure's massive but if you can make the insane deadline you walk away with a fat cheque.

Al Hunter Ashton	The CSA/Maintenance/alimony

Alan Williams	I’m tempted to say, ‘anything and everything’ however it’s more than that. I like a challenge and virtually all of my stories begin as a title around which I weave the plot. As examples, I offer The Cool Dark Place, The Pastel Blue Kangaroo, Twice In A Blue Moon, The Day Of The Giant Chook, The Neverwhen and The Goldilocks Place. If I’m stuck for a story idea, I often chose a song title as inspiration. The Same Old Song, The Pied Piper, Substitute are all songs I enjoy and I once again based stories on these titles.

Ali McNamara	I’m an only child, so I had plenty of time to day dream while I was growing up. I think this helped fuel my very over-active imagination. Now I’ve found an outlet for that I’m just putting it to good use!

Andrew Blackman	That feeling I talked about before. Trying to achieve that again, to say what I want to say, is always the lure that keeps me coming back for more.

Anne Brooke	My own hang-ups. The desire to get something down on paper that I can feel in my gut. Dreams and fantasies. And, as I made my choice not to have children many years ago, the need to leave something behind when I'm dead also drives me.

Ardella Jones	A funny phrase or absurd situation for poems and comedy sketches. For fiction, it may be personal experience or wanting to recreate somewhere exciting that I have visited or a strange world I have had access to. I’m a wimp really so I like to put cool characters into situations in which I am hopeless. I write humour but sometimes it is inspired by anger. I kill off characters based on people who annoy me.

Beanie Baby	Because I have to go out to work, I can really only find time to write properly in the evenings and I have a lovely little study - a snug, more like, where most of my books are in shelves lining the walls and I have a desk and an ergonomic chair, a filing cabinet, and files and folders in teetering piles, but I love it and I work well there. I also love to write in coffee shops - Caffe Nero's is a particular favourite. I find the soft music and the aroma of good coffee paricularly condusive. Having said that, though, I can write anywhere and often do - at the tram-stop, on the bus, in a queue. if I get an idea, I have to wite it down.

Bill Spence	The desire to see my work in print and my books on the shelves but I look on that as motivation. What inspires me to write in my case should be WHO inspires me to write? The answer to that - my wife and a very dear friend.

Cally Taylor	Emotion, imagination and a need to create something.

Candi Miller	A random sentence. For example, Salt & Honey started when I read that at a certain point in southern African history, one could obtain a licence to shoot a Bushman.

Candy Denman	It’s usually something very minor- a story in the local paper, a snatch of conversation on the bus, an anecdote down the pub, or something someone tells me about their lives that grabs my interest and makes me start thinking about the “but what if ?”

Caroline Rance	Not much really. I have to get along without inspiration most of the time.

Cassandra Clare	Life. A snatch of overheard conversation, a sentence in a book, a piece of music, coming across an interesting or unusual fact. Anything can be inspiration.

Catherine Richards	This is going to sound really pretentious but I like the idea that even if I got abducted by aliens or buried by a freak avalanche or something (likely I know) there will be something left behind. The thought that my words and ideas are sitting gathering dust on the shelf of someone’s bookcase somewhere, regardless of whether I’m around, is sort of comforting.

Cathy Glass	Anything and everything, but particularly an injustice. If I see or hear something that affects me I have to put pen to paper. Even my two (as yet unpublished) novels were inspired by injustice, although one is quite light-hearted, and satirical in its narration. I think we have to be moved in order to write successfully and from the heart.

Christina Courtenay	Going to writers’ conferences, talks and workshops always gives me a buzz and I usually come out of there motivated and energised. Also being with other writers, chatting about ideas and characters. I often do “brainstorming” sessions with one of my writing buddies and it’s great to bounce ideas off someone else like that.

Claire Moss	It's hard to talk about it without sounding very pretentious, but I have found, since starting to write properly, that I now am unable not to write.

Clare Sambrook	Curiosity and the rent.

Courttia Newland	The world I see around me. Untold stories.

Craig Baxter	Deadlines. Essential. There was a period last Summer when I had no deadlines at all and I ground to a complete halt and got quite despondant. Luckily a deadline came along and I gratefully climbed on board.

Danny Rhodes	Inspiration can come from anywhere; a news story; a thing somebody says; anywhere at all. The trick, I think, is not to rely on inspiration alone. That can be a very slow process and not conducive to making writing any type of career. I think I write because I want to leave something behind, a body of work that’s respected for instance. Also, it’s the only thing I’m any good at that I might get somewhere with!

Dawn Finch	It sounds cheesy – but everything and anything! I think that maybe I have always looked at the world askew. As I child I saw the hidden darkness in everything and, I’m told, that it does come out in my books. I think that maybe I look at the veneer of the world and try to see what lays beneath – the world just out of our grasp – the world that twitches behind the curtains. So everything inspires me and I keep a notebook in my bag always and constantly make notes of things that occur to me.

Deborah Swift	I’m inspired by real events and often use those as a starting point to work from. From there I ‘imagine outwards,’ like building clay onto an armature. In the case of The Lady’s Slipper it was coming across the actual wild flower of that name on one of my walks - an odd event as the flower had a guard standing by it to make sure it did not get picked. Curious, as to why a wild flower warranted such attention, I followed it up. I added some fascinating research about local Quaker history, a dash of intrigue – and hey presto….

Diane Samuels	Being alive. Conflict and discord in myself and in the world around me and a desire to work it through to harmony.

Domenica De Rosa	So far I have been inspired by Italy and by my family. The big test will be if I can write a novel without an Italian in it!

Elizabeth Buchan	I never know. It just sneaks up on me unbidden – I may be talking or reading - and, suddenly, I have an idea for a novel.

Elizabeth Speller	It’s a sort of neurosis, I think! I can’t not write. I express almost everything in my life in writing.

Emilia di Girolamo	Good stories needing to be told.

Eva Salzman	A phrase, like a song-riff. Nature, beauty, sorrow, pain, rage, injustice, ignorance…a combination of these. The Insignificant pointing to the Significant. The curtain drawn aside, the wizard’s machinery revealed, which doesn’t mean the magic is destroyed. With a version of enlightenment comes some kind of unity. You can still be taken in by the illusion you yourself create. Whatever the inspiration, I need to be surprised, preferably by myself.

Fiona Robyn	My novels are inspired by the protagonists ‘turning up in my head’ – I get to know them slowly and then try and tell their story. I’m just the typist!

Gary Davison	Not sure you’d call it inspiration. I just love doing it. If I’m not writing something new I’m messing about editing for hours.

George Szirtes	Almost anything can inspire given the occasion. I seem to have written a good deal about history, art, human fate, semi-conscious dream states, ideas, and intimate relationships. A great many situations and events can touch chords that echo in that terrain: it could be the movements of a bird on a fence, a photograph, a colour, a city. At bottom it is, I suspect, apprehension, vivacity and mortality. I suppose most poetry is that.

Gillian Cross	Getting an idea out of the blue and feeling that it has a lot of substance to it.

Gillian McClure	I think places inspire me to write; places I’ve known from my childhood. While I’ve been a RLF fellow at Kent University I’ve been thinking about a story set in Kent where I used to be taken hop picking in the early 1950s when I was a tiny child.

Gordon and Williams	RG: Fear of failure and a basic, irrational urge? BW: Death, sex, and other people’s money.

Helen Black	I have nothing of the tortured artist about me. If I’ve scheduled some time to work then that’s what I do. I plan or write or do publicity. I’m far too tough/practical/northern to wait for inspiration.

Helen Castor	I’ve always loved history, and it’s a privilege to spend my working life grappling with the past and constructing the best versions I can of the lives of people I find fascinating.

Helen McWilliams	Everything and anything!

Jae Watson	Noticing the weirdness/beauty of life and of people’s behaviour; feeling passionately about certain issues and places…having a lot of baggage.

James Burge	The desire to communicate, the desire to show off, the desire to work something out for myself. Not really sure

Jane Elmor	I think for me it's poetic justice! Perhaps in real life it doesn't always happen, which is why it's so great to be able to dole it out for your characters! Like a lot of writers writing feels like something I have to do, even though my first publishing deal has come later rather than sooner. During times I haven't been writing I'm always shadowed by a niggling, frustrated feeling that there's something really important I should be doing rather than temping or housework, or even having fun. If everything you see and hear seems to you like 'good material' you are cursed to be a writer.

Jane Rogers	Ideas I want to understand. Place. Mood.

Jem	A shopping habit

Jenn Ashworth	The things I'm not able to say, but want someone else to hear, I suppose. Ideas that I can't quite see or articulate unless I can get them down on paper.

Jenny Eclair	Can't do anything else and too old to waitress. I also like the idea of oldEnglish teachers spinning in their graves. So- spite really.

Jill McGivering	I have always loved writing. The sense of engagement with the characters is an intense and addictive pleasure. There is a saying that writing is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. Certainly it does involve a lot of determination and sheer hard work but when the writing does flow, it is deeply satisfying.

Jim Younger	I can’t say anything inspires me to write, unless it’s maybe something very deep in me that I carry from childhood. I think it must be that. I’ve always told stories - lies, quite frankly, like the time I told my dinner table at infant school about my uncle being drowned on the submarine Thetis. My mother was a dinner lady, so I told my pals not to mention it to her, because she was very upset. Devious, eh? I got the idea from the magazine Reveille. An image, a voice, a phrase, a story … anything could start me off.

John Murray	My passions I suppose and my obsessions. Jazz Etc is all about my favourite music jazz and its impact on its characters. It's also about romantic love which is another obsession of mine. Murphy's Favourite Channels was inspired by my getting a satellite dish and going digital with telly and radio. Going from 4 channels to 400 channels(even though most of them are incredible rubbish) I found mindboggling…if that experience doesn’t inspire you, what will? The other thing that inspires me is character. In a 19th century tradition I aim for rich characterisation and even though I'm a comic writer I aim for a kind of moral analysis of the characters. John Dory has a Christian theme which is more or less buried until you get to the end. A lot of people have responded warmly to that book and it gratifies me that people aren't put off by a Christian 'message'. I suppose I'm also obsessed with language. I grew up talking Cumbrian dialect and I read Sanskrit at Oxford and I think that explains an obsession with comic punning and wordplay!

John Ritchie	As I have written, in my piece ‘The problem with being a writer’ it is a compulsion, a need to get the stories roaring around in my head down on to paper so I have some kind of peace and control, even if I know that control is actually illusory, and that I am only pretending to know what my characters are going to do next. I have lost count of the number of times a story has taken on a life of its own ’twixt my head and the printed page.

Jon Haylett	It’s not an inspiration, it’s an urge, and I have this theory that it’s a gift inherited from generations of storytellers. Having said this, I believe I write well because I draw on the experiences I’ve had in my wanderings across the world. To have met, and lived and worked with such a variety of people, to have seen some quite wonderful and wild places, to have experienced fear and privation and exhilaration - these give me the makings for my stories.

Jonathan Wolfman	These days it’s the movies, plays, series and acting performances that I love. Early on it was a much more elemental drive to express myself.

Josa Young	Life and love and passion and the misguided assumptions about life people make - influenced by where they come from and what has happened in their families going back generations.

Judith Johnson	People.

Julia Bell	Human ironies, injustices, to do something new with language, to put the world to rights, to investigate character . . . Margaret Atwood lists at great length all the reasons that people might write in her essays/lectures - “Negotiating with the Dead’ (CUP) – it’s a funny list. My motivations might be different on any given day of the week. Or depending where I am at a particular point in a story. Sometimes, especially towards the end, it’s just an urgent desire to get the damn thing done.

Kal Bonner	All kinds of things. I'm like a tap that been turned on and you can't turn it off. I'm constantly thinking of storylines and new dialogue. I'm at present looking for a snake-hipped young man to be my new Muse, after the last one escaped. B &Q don't make rope like they used to.

Kate Long	Reading excellent fiction.

Kate Tym	Everything and anything. Lots of little domestic bits. My relationships – husband, daughters, friends. Women’s issues – don’t groan! – the world I’m bringing my daughters up in, with homogenous-looking clone girls and celebrity fixated wannabes is quite scary and makes me wonder why Emily Davison bothered throwing herself under the king’s horse!

Kathryn Haig	The whole purpose of writing is, for me, to give readers an hour or two of pleasure and escapism. Books have always been so important in my life. I read in the bath, when I’m cleaning my teeth, when I’m ironing (and often iron my own fingers!) . . . So I write the books that I would enjoy reading.

Kia Abdullah	My first novel was a form of catharsis; a way to exorcise some of my demons and write about some of the issues and inequalities I had faced in my own life. It was quite an intense process. My readers and the positive feedback I have received are the inspiration behind my second novel. So far, writing the second one is proving to be a lot of fun.

Kit Peel	Things I believe in that I want to explore. I’ve always found language magical.

Laura Watson	The desire to entertain, scare or move. The desire to share a view, opinion or bit of my imagination.

Lee Henshaw	Emptying my head of conflicting thoughts.

Lee Jackson	Reading about the Victorian period and a desire to surprise the reader.

Lola Jaye	Many things. When I was an unpublished author it was the thought of not being a published author! But seriously though, it could be a child’s smile; a song; a topic on television or just walking through a sweaty tube station (a lot of my book titles were born this way!); a comment; a looming deadline…

Long Barn Books	Places and great prose written by others,

Lucy McCarraher	People – friends, family, life. Relationships – with partners, children, family, parents, friends. The meaning of life. At the moment, more specifically, the 17th century farmhouse we live in and the layers of lives which are embedded in the clay lump walls, the surrounding village and the East Anglian landscape generally. “Blood and Water” is set in Dulwich and Crystal Palace, where I used to live – and again, the house, the street, the community and its history are what inspired large parts of the plot.

Malcolm Burgess	That fantastic feeling you get when it’s all going well, plus the challenge to always do better and be brave and try new things – plus the money of course.

Maria McCarthy	At the moment, money.

Mark Liam Piggott	Good writing, bad writing, our strange times. Maybe inspired is the wrong word; I don’t feel inspired most of the time, just driven.

Matt Lynn	The thought of getting the book into people’s hands. Plus, the sheer pleasure of writing itself. You have to really enjoy the process of putting words and stories together to keep on doing it.

Meg Peacocke	My poems seem to be sparked off by a collision between different things, for instance a memory and an event in my present life; so there seems to be a crucial element of chance. At the same time, “Chance visits the prepared mind” (Louis Pasteur said that.) There’s a kind of recognition. Preparing the mind – that must have something to do with the way you live.

Michael Ridpath	I could make something up, but the truth is I don’t know. I just feel a strong compulsion to do it.

Michelene Wandor	This is not an answerable question; it is what I do, it is how I earn my living, and it is what goes on in my mind and imagination.

Milly Johnson	I don’t wait for inspiration otherwise I’d get nothing done. I start writing and inspiration joins me on the journey.

Neil Forsyth	The certainty that I could not do anything better. So I’d better push on with this and make a decent stab of it.

Neil J Hart	Other peoples writing. Music, films, TV, and the buzz of writing itself. Anything can spark off an idea. I keep a large book for writing these down as and when they arrive. Anything from dreams, conversations, expressions, names, to theories and philosophies. I read a lot of non-fiction too as a basis for creating stories / characters outside of my own personal knowledge. Science journals, Greek myths, the Fortean Times, religious texts and Cosmo are all sources to dip into.

Neil Nixon	I can’t help it. I have ideas of all kinds all the time. A chance to make decent money and/or do something so unusual it’s bound to be a challenge is what inspires me to get down to work.

Nick Griffiths	In the day job, money. Though I always hope to enjoy the work, which inspires me to put in heart and soul. Author-wise, the dream of seeing an actual book with my name on the cover. Plus the enjoyment of crafting sentences.

Nick Stafford	Usually, when I read or hear or see or, crucially, FEEL some humans doing something and it makes me ask why? You have to have to write things, things that feel right, and find some kindred spirits, and you must make yourself available to receive.

Nicky Singer	It’s like breathing. If you don’t do it, you die a little.

Nik Perring	Again no one single thing. An idea. A set of circumstances. People. Struggles. I don’t think that as a writer you can afford to wait for that moment of inspiration. I think you have to get out there and find it, grab it and wrestle it onto the page.

Patricia Cumper	For the past four years, I’ve been the writer on the summer production put on by Talawa’s Young Peoples Theatre and each time I am blown away by their talent and bravery. They inspire me. I want them to be part of British theatre with confidence and pride so I try to teach them everything I can. I want them to understand that their heritage doesn’t detract from being British but rather enhances it.

Patrick Dillon	At the moment, the thrill of introducing children to whole worlds they don’t yet know about. I’m quite certain that it’s important for children to know about our history. At the same time it’s just as inspiring for me to put myself in their shoes and look at our history afresh, through new eyes. You can tell the oldest stories in the world to children, and when they hear it, it becomes new again.

Paul Reed	Humour in adversity, inspirational books, the martial arts, Irvine Welsh. When Trainspotting came out it inspired me that someone from my background could be a writer. Also, when Quintin Jardine got published; I'd known him since I was a wee laddie.

Peter Robertson	A great love that went wrong but enough said about that. I have a conservative soul and dislike talking about my private life, especially in light of what happened, and its aftermath.

Preethi Nair	I write because I have stories to share. I write because it is the thing that I do best.

Rebecca Strong	Little observances made throughout the day that spark my imagination.

Ron Morgans	Having covered so many major news events all those years, that information is stuffed in my head. It cost me my leisure and one marriage. Writing is an exorcism.

Rosy Barnes	The ridiculousness of people and the incredible self-justifications and arguments they make for what they do – often for just being mean.

Sally Nicholls	Stories. I keep hearing stories and thinking ‘ooh, that would make a good book’. They all stack up in the back of my brain. Also people. When I was a teenager I used to steal minor characters from novels and TV programmes and create entire back stories and futures for them.

Sara Maitland	Being alive and believing in God.

Sarah Salway	I use writing to sort out what I think about things. I have lots of knots going on in my head at any one time, so although that’s a pain for living, it makes for lots of writing inspiration.

Sarah Stovell	‘Inspires’ is a strong word. It’s not often I feel truly inspired. Most of the time, I just wake up and turn the computer on and think, ‘Better get on with it.’ However, sometimes if I read a beautiful poem, or a staggering passage of prose, I get very excited and feel I absolutely have to write something. But I usually don’t, because at times like that, my mind is switched into sensory overload and I can’t concentrate.

Shahrukh Husain	Everything. I just don’t have enough bodies to execute all the ideas.

Shika	I come from a diverse and quirky extended family of nomads who are a rich source of inspiration. Do you have a writing routine? A place that’s special? I write whenever I can find the space to spark up my laptop. I once wrote a quick chapter whilst I was in a hospital waiting room waiting to have my stress levels checked out; I’ve written in taxis on the way back to the office after landing at Heathrow airport and every Friday I squeeze myself into a corner just outside my daughter’s drama school staff room and type until the class is over. Do you address particular themes or issues in your writing? The immigrant experience and how it soaks up or clashes against its adoptive new culture interests me. Where do you get your ideas from? Some are real life events that I embellish; sometimes I write to redress a wrong or give another perspective on something. For example, I wrote a short story about Botswana after I discovered that forty percent of the population are HIV positive.

Sion Scott-Wilson	People.

Sol B River	Music, Love, fascination, disappointment. Love of people, love of the world, the sadness and optimism of any certain state of affairs.

Stella Duffy	A combination of wanting to make the world better and touch people and the need to pay my mortgage.

Steve Feasey	My love of books. Like most writers, I fell in love with books at an early age, and those stories inspire me to write my own. It just took me a long time to figure that out. I wish it hadn’t taken quite so long.

Steven Hague	Maybe a beautifully written chapter in a novel, a great scene in a movie, or praise from my readers, but it’s always one part inspiration to nine parts perspiration, and anyway, I’m not really sure that ‘inspires’ is the right word, as it’s actually more of a need to write. This is the only natural talent I’ve been blessed with and to waste it would be a crime, plus when I’m not writing I feel completely worthless – like the laziest guy on the face of the planet. And all the other vital parts of being a writer, stuff like research, plotting, and publicity, doesn’t count either – the only thing that does is words on the page.

Sue Moorcroft	The actual act of writing is a compulsion. I just find myself making things up. But why I write about this subject or that …? I suppose I just find something remarkable and want to explore it. It doesn’t sound very interesting, put like that, but my mind wanders around and then latches onto something and I find I have something to say. Characters drive my fiction so finding the right character is a big help.

Tania Hershman	Everything.

Tara Hyland	Wanting to write the kind of book that I’d love to read.

Tibor Fischer	Bills.

Tim Lott	Human absurdity.

Tony McGowan	Now, it’s the desire for renown. It used to be the simple love of words. And before that it was the vague hope that it might impress girls.

Trilby Kent	Great writing.

Vanessa Curtis	Music, comic situations, talk, (my next novel is inspired by a conversation I heard between two women on a very slow train to London), the endless ticking of the clock towards my 40th birthday and that moment where a character suddenly pops into my head and demands that I write an entire novel around them.

Vanessa Gebbie	Usually, something I see. A picture. Photo. Colours mixing. A look passing between two people. Something visual, often surreal.

William Coles	I don't know about "inspire" - but it's what I enjoy doing. Not that it isn't a challenge and a lot of graft. But it's my trade. I hope to be doing it till the day I die.

William Sutton	People, comments, situations, revelations, events, fears, angers. Everything. Little things connect and turn from life problems into writing ideas (especially when hungover).

Zoe Fairbairns	I don't always know, particularly at the time. It just feel like an intense and passionate interest in something or someone, and a desire to build a story. Afterwards, I can often see patterns. In my new collection of stories, How Do You Pronounce Nulliparous? (Five Leaves Press) I find myself returning again and again to the gaps between words and actions - the way so often we say one thing, mean another and do something else. In the title story, a 40-something woman who has never had children and never wanted to, revisits her decision, remembering the many things she has been told about motherhood by mothers. In Meek & Mild, a young child is sent to a school run by a religion that neither she nor her parents belong to. In Capitalists 'R' Us, ageing anti-capitalist activists try to square their beliefs with their desire to give up work and live on investment income (or retire on a pension, as it is more generally known). Words are the writer's tools; some have sharper edges than others, but they are not always equal to the complexities we face. Writing fiction is my way of trying to make sense of these.<br><br>

Zoe Lambert	I guess I’m often trying to get something across. It’s also addictive or ‘moreish’…

Zoe Williams	Stimulants and psychoactive drugs.