“Write hungry. This is not to say that writing while full can't be its own version of wonderful, your body so saturated with almond paste cookies, bourbon, or love that the words fall from you like overripe fruit. But on my best writing days, I come to the page as soon as I wake, uncluttered by the business of living, unburdened by Facebook or e-mail or even oatmeal. I get a cup of coffee and sit before my laptop. This simple act transforms my body into a receptive vessel, one tuned into the scent of coffee and the thoughts and images pooling just under the surface of things. If you’re a channel when you write (and you are), emptiness can clear the static. And it need not be the gut that's empty. Listen to a song from high school. Remember a place that was once home. Look into the face of an old photograph. Hunger. I spend most of my life avoiding it, but for writing, it has a place. Not so much that it distracts, but enough so that my senses are sharpened and space is made for the words to come, simple and true.”
—Sonja Livingston, author of Queen of the Fall (University of Nebraska Press, 2015)
Photo credit: Gregory Gerard