Goodreads asked Bill Smoot:

How do you get inspired to write?

Bill Smoot "Inspiration" may be overestimated by writers or aspiring writers. I do sometimes experience bursts of energy that may pass for "inspiration," but for the most part what I feel is not so much inspiration as motivation. For the series of short stories I've been working on, the motivation is usually a germ--an event or even an image--and from that seed I try to grow a story. In one case, it was simply a large brick house. In another it was a memory of a doctor in my home town. In another it was a story someone told me of eating fried crow. In the case of my novel, Love: A Story, it was the opening scene in which the main character sees a baby stroller rolling down the street (that actually happened to me). I feel there's a story there, and I am the farmer whose mission is to grow it.

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