The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction: Inspiration & Discipline

Survey Our Literary Landscape From the Open Window of Glimmer Train

What drives you to write? How does a particular piece of writing come to exist?

In Inspiration and Discipline, the second volume in our Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction series, more than one hundred accomplished authors set aside talk of character and scene in order to address the more private and elusive aspects of their writing lives. In excerpts from interviews conducted over a seventeen-year period and preserved by the editors of the highly respected literary quarterly Glimmer Train Stories and its supplement Writers Ask, contemporary writers offer insights on such topics as family support (or lack thereof), using autobiographical material, and the responsibility of writing–sharing their own personal and philosophical approaches to this most strange, heartbreaking, and wonderful of artistic vocations.

Jayne Anne Phillips, Thisbe Nissen, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Thom Jones, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Beverly Lowry, Siri Hustvedt, Richard Bausch, Charles Baxter, Sue Miller, Ha Jin

There may never be an explanation for where stories come from, but the wisdom, humor, and advice of the writers in these pages will provide you with the inspiration you need to keep your writing life moving forward.

Susan Burmeister-Brown and her sister, Linda B. Swanson-Davies, are the editors of the literary short-fiction quarterly Glimmer Train Stories, the newsletter Writers Ask, and the story collections Mother Knows: 24 Tales of Motherhood and Where Love Is Found. They live in Portland, Oregon with their families.