James Lee Burke is a writer I admire. He’s been writing for years and gives great advice to aspiring writers in interviews. He has written over 30 books and went one time for 13 years without selling a novel. He’s a great source of inspiration, so I urge you to look him up on whatever source you use for research. About creativity, Burke says,
“I believe creativity is a votive gift, presented arbitrarily by the hand of God, and those who possess it are simply its vessel. Those who become grandiose and vain about its presence in their lives usually see it taken from them and given to someone else. At least that has been my experience.”
Burke writes every day. He has said that he tries to write two scenes a day, no more, no less, but at the end of a year he has a novel done.
Burke also is well known for the imagery in his work. The environment is almost a character. The following is the opening paragraph from The Glass Rainbow.
“The room I had rented in an old part of Natchez seemed more reflective of New Orleans than a river town in Mississippi. The ventilated storm shutters were slatted with a pink glow, as soft and filtered and cool in color as the spring sunrise can be in the Garden District, the courtyard outside touched with mist off the river, the pastel walls deep in shadow and stained with lichen above the flower beds, the brick walkways smelling of damp stone and the wild spearmint that grew in green clusters between the bricks. I could see the shadows of banana trees moving in the window screens, the humidity condensing and threading along the fronds like veins in living tissue. I could hear a ship’s horn blowing somewhere out on the river, a long hooting sound that was absorbed and muted inside the mist, thwarting its own purpose. A wood-bladed fan revolved slowly above my bed, the incandescence of the lightbulbs attached to it reduced to a dim yellow smudge inside frosted-glass shades that were fluted to resemble flowers. The wood floor and the garish wallpaper and the rain spots on the ceiling belonged to another era, one that was outside time and unheedful of the demands of commerce. Perhaps as a reminder of that fact, the only clock in the room was a round windup mechanism that possessed neither a glass cover nor hands on its face.”