Goodreads asked Michael Paul Stephens:

How do you get inspired to write?

Michael Paul Stephens I didn't get inspired to write. It feels more like writing inspires me. It's hard to explain but I never needed encouragement. I started writing when I was 15 or 16, writing three books in two years, rattling them out on an old typewriter. They never got published. But I loved the process of their creation.

Its more like I need to write than i'm inspired to write. Sometimes I feel like a pot bubbling over with ideas and words and i've got to put them somewhere. Maybe that pot was once filled with the angst of a teenager but now its more like a set of canvases that need to get filled with certain shapes and forms that I haven't seen anywhere else.

That, I suppose, is the inspiration. But it feels more like a calling than an inspiration.

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