Goodreads asked Billy O'Callaghan:

How do you get inspired to write?

Billy O'Callaghan When it comes to writing, I tend to think in terms of themes. Stories grow of their own accord, emerging organically from the things that concern me, the things I tend to think deeply about. Over the past few years quite a bit of my own life has begun to infiltrate the work. In most cases it is indirect, and I can fictionalize it when it happens, but I find that it gives my writing an added depth, maybe a sense of greater authenticity.
Travel never fails to inspire me. I am wide-eyed and hungry for the details of the world. Reading also lights my fire, particularly the touchstone writers, the likes of Hemingway and Steinbeck. Poetry is also an endless fascination.
I work very slowly, at a sentence level, and I find constant inspiration in the flow and rhythms of the language. It usually takes a long time for the story I am trying to tell to fully reveal itself to me, but I have learned patience.

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