APPRECIATION #11: THOSE FIRST MOMENTS OF INSPIRATION

Sometimes it’s Jack London’s “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” And sometimes it’s the voice of God, or what feels like it. This morning I’m looking around for a big stick.

I love the first moments of inspiration, the moments when you have to write it down, when you start to giggle because your body needs to. The truth is that most of these moments are false alarms, like false labor. It feels like it’s the real thing, and it can be if you’re willing to put in the work. Like labor, when you feel the first contractions, the real work is just about to begin. I know this, of course, because I am a man.

A lot has been written about the myths of creativity where the narrative being passed around is that some writers and artists are taking dictation from God. This is stupid, and it’s not. Sometimes it feels like that. Mostly, no. Many people have said variations of “Luck happens to the prepared.” I say that too. I love what A.W. Tozer says about art (I kept looking for the exact thing… I will find it and put it in here…)

For me, those first moments of inspiration fade quickly. If shared, they often die laugh-induced deaths. At first, the idea seems perfect, and I feel like a genius who has just opened the curtain and realized the great and mighty Oz is just some guy. And then. And then the work begins. This is where it’s easy to get off the train and talk about how much of a railroader you think you are. (Austin Kleon has a great chart that summarizes the life of a creative project in one of his books and on his website that I didn’t successfully find and include a link to here…but will…)

After the inspiration, it’s work. I thought I had a brilliant poem in my head yesterday, and I got it on paper. It’s a decent skeleton for a poem, with four distinct parts that can relate if I can make them relate. But from here it’s work. And I might keep chiseling at it, but I don’t know. It’s a giant stone and I can only partially visualize the sculpture inside. It’s like Michelangelo didn’t say (see: Quote Investigator) “It’s easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David.” This quote assumes a few things that aren’t true.

I love those first moments of inspiration because the idea is often general, void of specifics or the how. Or it is very specific without any clue of the larger puzzle it belongs in. In those first moments, it’s hard to tell if what you are feeling is:

1. I AM AN ENGLISH TEACHER THAT SHOULD RUN FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

or

2. I AM A WRITER WHO SHOULD WRITE A STORY ABOUT AN ENGLISH TEACHER WHO RUNS FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Either way, it’s all work from this point on. I like to pause and laugh. If you ever see me laughing, when there doesn’t seem to be any contextually obvious reason why, it’s probably because I’m enjoying an initial moment of inspiration. Some ideas have the lifespans of fruit flies, and I want to believe that all life has value.

I love those moments before reality and pragmatics, and the cacophony of dream-killing nonsense, tries to convince you that it’s all hooey and pointless. This feeling is often fleeting like the lifespan of a fruit fly, but it can be the fuel to get you started, and I like that.