Goodreads asked Skip Rhudy:

How do you get inspired to write?

Skip Rhudy These days words seem to come suddenly and with no explanation. Sometimes it's a kind of delicate lyricism that pulses through my head so magically that I don't even want to move because I fear that moving or trying to write the words down would cause the stream of words to disappear. So I let them come and go because the streaming is so enjoyable and because later on there will be more words to replace them anyway. There are other times that I can feel something coming on and I can get ready for it, get a computer or a pen or even make a recording as the stream of words come out of me. When that happens it is a great thing and much better than when I was younger when I would try to make stories happen but they didn't want to come out on their own. So I would force the words. But forced words suck. It took me a long time to understand that when that was happening it was much better to just go do something else and wait for the words to come on their own. The words would either come someday -- maybe next week or next month or maybe next year -- or maybe they would never come at all.

I did wait a long time and I don't know when it started but at some point the words started coming again and I could feel that they were not forced anymore but came out naturally and were true. That is a mystery and it is one of the few mysteries I don't want to solve.

flag