Goodreads asked Steve Burt:

How do you get inspired to write?

Steve Burt I "noodle." I kick around an idea and create a few characters (loosely), then see if there's anything interesting. If not, or if it only works for a while, I toss it and try again. When I made up the stories for Even Odder, I was facing writer's block--constantly rewording first sentences, first paragraphs, first pages--because I thought I had to top the previous award-winning book, Odd Lot. But then I trusted the storyteller part of the brain and stepped away from the writer part of it that was so besieged by the picky editor who asked for perfection. I used the storyteller function by making up oral stories totally out of the blue--as if I were making up a nonsense story for a little child at bedtime--and let the story unfold. With a tape recorder and a dog needing to be walked for an hour each day, I was able to free my creative self. Only after I made up 40-some stories, many of which were terrible, did I select the top 15 and transcribe them to disk and edit them. They became a Bram Stoker Award Nominated collection. The other part of my answer is: I realize I'm never going to make much money at writing, so I write what's fun for me rather than what I think readers will like (or buy). Try to get back to those early pre-teen or teen years when the joy was in making stuff up, not worrying about who'd like it or how much you'd make on it.

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