I am currently reading Etgar Keret's, http://www.thinqon.com/member/etgar.keret, new book of short stories "Suddenly, a knock on the door", which is the name of the first story, and I wanted to give it a place here.
I read the first three stories and each brought me a smile through a tear. In Keret's writing, I find myself reminded of a rainbow, through his bringing forth the tragic facts of life next to the little jokes and joys. At the end of the story comes the rainbow through his ability to ally those elements and create.

The first story is about creation. How does it happen, what motivates the writer? A gun? A baby? Why do we write?
There is also technique: "suddenly, a knock on the door", a tool that makes things happen. But Keret doesn't wish to just entertain, to write and imagine all from nothing. The hero of the story (Keret) wishes to brave the difficulty of writing something from something and bring what is within him out.

I admire that he dared to show us, the readers, the void he's looking at before creating. As readers, we are witnesses of his getting closer to it, and there is this tension of whether he will make it, will he succeed in creating a new story. As we see the void engulfing us and him and believe it's too late and it won't happen, suddenly emerges his creation, unexpected.

Some years ago I read "The Things" (Les Choses) by George Perec, and in the Appendix there was a talk he gave about his work, where he explains his inspiration, or base to his book, coming from different literary works. I don't know where Keret finds his inspiration, what is this something of which his creation rises from. But this first story of his new book, made me think back to Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Maelstrom" and Ionesco's "L'impromptu de l'Alma".