Looking for Inspiration in All the Wrong Places by Connie Berry

 

 

“Where do you get your inspiration?” Authors get asked that question all the time, and we try to answer it honestly. Which is the problem, because there really isn’t an answer—not a truthful one anyway—because inspiration isn’t the same thing as ideas.

Writers get ideas from true crime and daily news reports. We mine history and family legends. We read books and articles that capture our interest. We observe people around us and eavesdrop on the conversations of strangers. We ask that all-important question—“What if?”

Getting ideas isn’t difficult. They're everywhere. But inspiration, that illusive spark of creativity, isn’t something we can summon at will.

Glen Hansard, the Irish musician and poet once said:

“The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don’t understand people who get up at 9 o’clock in the morning, put on the coffee, and sit down to write.”

Of course, you can get up, put on the coffee, and sit down to write. We all do it—the necessary work of transferring ideas into words, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and chapters. But Hansard wasn’t talking about craft. He was talking about true inspiration. Plato called it a kind of madness.

That madness includes not only the creativity that informs original plots and generates unforgettable characters. It also includes language itself, that magical moment when ordinary words take on a rhythm and an unexpected beauty that surprises and delights the writer as well as the reader.

James Joyce once gave an example of the beauty of language in Jesus’ words when he stands before the tomb of Lazarus. In French, Joyce said, the words would be “Jeune homme, je te dit, lève-toi.” But in English, Joyce said, it would be, “Young man, I say unto thee, arise,” the sound carrying with it, he said, the image of rising. (Dinita Smith, “Writing and Madness”) https://centerforfiction.org/writing-tools/writing-and-madness/”

So where is true inspiration to be found? I don’t believe it is found. It finds us and is received with an appropriate sense of wonder and gratitude.

The goal is to create an atmosphere that invites inspiration.

For me, creating an atmosphere conducive to receiving the gift of inspiration means slowing down, daydreaming, allowing my thoughts to wander down paths that appear irrelevant—some would call it wasting time.

Where does the muse find you? How do you invite the gift of inspiration?