I consider it a part of my discipline as a writer not to write two Taco Breaks in a row, because they’re very easy to come up with and very easy to write, so doing too many in a row feels like cheapening both Taco Breaks and my writing. But it’s been a week of fucking days, as they say, and I found myself with only a few hours to knock something up, no time to ask someone to take my slot for this week, and no inspiration, even for the longer essays I’ve been working on. So, I’ll ask you all – what inspires your writing? And if you don’t write, what inspires your choice of movies or television? I’ve been finding I get the most inspiration writing about long-form works – the essays I write that I tend to come back to over and over again are about television series, because I enjoy crushing them into their most essential concepts. In that same spirit are the Double Features I (and Miller) sometimes indulge in, something that allows me to elevate a single, smaller work by bouncing it off other works; I always liked the whimsical extension of this idea I achieved in “Home”, and maybe I should shoot for that again. It’s rare moments that I write an essay because I’m suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, and the results are usually satisfying in the short term (venting always is) but only rarely stick with me for longer, and it’s even rarer that I write about something topical – and I almost always regret it because I’m never certain if I have the best grip on what I’m writing about. In picking movies or shows, I lean towards subjects that I’m pretty sure I’ll have something new or unique to say about, and where possible I lean towards something I know other people will have things to tell me about.

What is your inspiration?