Month: March 2016

I can’t write without my 1967 copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, which I use as much to suggest new and surprising directions a poem might take as for the right word. (Sometimes Roget gives me the wrong word, which can also be liberating.) I also need my notebooks, where I scribble notes, ideas, images, character sketches, quotations from philosophy or from pottery manuals (I’m working on a novel about a ceramicist). If, for my third thing, I had to choose between a computer and Twig, I’d be in trouble! I do almost all my drafting on a computer. But Twig understands the rhythm of my writing life, and sometimes when he curls up next to the computer and rests his head on the back of my hand, he literally insists that I stay put – which is one of the best ways of getting anything done.