Writing Inspiration

Reading the wise words of other writers is a great way of finding inspiration for your own writing. We all have favourite writers and these days many of them have some sort of web presence. It's worth gooogling and seeing if your favourites have a blog or website. These sites will have the usual publicity blurbs about their latest books and some information on their lives but there's often recent postings from the writer, many of which will contain pearls of wisdom about writing and life in general.There are also a number of books around in which writers are interviewed about their works. Take a look at these for starters:

• Writers On Writing - Ed James Roberts, Barry Mitchell, Roger Zubrinich (Penguin 2002) (Australian)
• Writers On Writing Vol ll - More Collected Essays from The New Tork Times (Times Books 2004)
• Making Stories - How Ten Australian Novels Were Written -Kate Grenville and Sue Woolfe (Allen & Unwin 1993)
• Speaking Voumes - Conversations with Remarkable Writers - Ramona Koval (Scribe 2010)

Magazines like Writer's Digest have loads of information on writing in general and always have an interview or two with a well known writer. In the latest edition Alice Walker shares her views on writing and the writing life. You can read an extended version of the interview at www.writersdigest.com/article/alice-walker-uncut  and you can find her blog at www.alicewalkerblog.comI'll leave you with these  lines from Alice Walker's poem, The Writer's Life:Writers perfectThe artOf doing nothingSo beautifully....If there is a StoryIt willCoughIn the middleOf ourLazyDayOnly onceMaybe more& Announceitself.Happy reading ... and writing.