Goodreads asked David Albertyn:

How do you get inspired to write?

David Albertyn I have a routine that helps me get into the mode of writing whereby I read from a novel that stylistically I would like to emulate for about 10 minutes. Then I read from my own work, starting a little further back from my furthest point, for about 5-10 minutes, to get back into the flow of the style I've been using for that piece. And then I begin writing. I think of it as similar to a warm up for a musician or an athlete, and I feel that by the end of the warm up my brain is in a well-focused and inspired state, while also being in the rhythm of the language and style I want to use for that stretch of writing.

As for general inspiration: I like telling people my story ideas. I know some writers prefer to keep their ideas locked up until they've finished a draft or several, but what inspires me is oral storytelling. Sharing my story with another person, experiencing their reaction, imagining the characters and their situation together, gets me excited to create the story on the page. Also my original ideas develop a great deal through this process before I ever start writing, because as I bounce my idea off other people, they often lend their own insights and provide great ideas that I end up using, or just the act of telling someone a story, trying to entertain them, I come up with new ideas. So oral storytelling of ideas in their infancy provides probably my greatest inspiration to write. And it creates a foundation from which I can build off when I do sit down to write, as opposed to starting from scratch when I put pen to paper.

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