Posted by editors on Sep 24, 2014 in Uncategorized | 0 comments
Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart . . . –Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Inspiration: The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative; the drawing in of breath; inhalation; from the Middle English for ‘divine guidance.’
One of the first pieces of advice we often receive as students of writing is not to wait around for inspiration; not to expect that a muse will sing down especially-tailored verses to us from Mount Parnassus; that writers write—that being a writer means putting ass in chair, and pen to paper or fingers to keys. Words on the page. Writing is work. A calling, maybe; a deep desire, a critical element of our survival, even—yes, yes, and yes, but also, work.
How, though, do we do this work?
So many of us become writers because we feel inspired. Inspiration, in fact, is what many of us have in bulk as we begin. There’s a burning in our fingertips, on the tips of our tongues, in our throats, in our souls; the need, the want, the compulsion to express our inner being into the outer realm. For many of us, we’ve had this since childhood, since we first picked up a pen or book; when we held that book in our hands and thought, I want to make something like this, and then set out to do so in our Hello Kitty notebooks, or some other place. So when we’re told to all but forget about inspiration, to view the act of writing as not some mysterious, divine rite but, rather, serious, hard work (which it is), we might feel like we’ve been banished to a rowboat that’s drifted out to sea, the waters too wide, the current too rough for our oars.
As a teacher of writing, I see this drift in many of my students who know they want to write, who want to be “writers,” but feel unworthy, or phony, or hopeless, because they don’t know what to write about. They don’t know how to sit at the desk and make those words appear on the page no matter what—no matter what mood they’re in, or whether or not their muse is on a smoke break. So over time, I’ve tried to help demystify the process, to come up with some concrete methods for helping students utilize inspiration as one of their greatest assets, while setting that inspiration to work.
One of the first steps we take is looking at writers’ sources of material. A go-to source for all of us, arguably, but most especially beginning writers is emotion. The trouble with this arises when we’re not feeling much of anything, and don’t have the luxury of waiting around for the next wave of powerful emotion.
Another go-to is the imagination. Many of us begin writing because we grow up reading fantastical stories set in rich, extraordinary landscapes, and we feel the urge to create our own. Some of us can churn these out at will, but for many of us, it’s a struggle to maintain the flow of fresh ideas.
Luckily, there are innumerable sources of material beyond the realm of our immediate emotions and our own imaginations. And while we don’t ever really need (or want) to leave emotion and imagination behind—indeed, they can lead us deeper into any subject, in any genre—it is often useful to seek beyond them for material, especially when we’re stuck.
With my classes, I like to begin by listing some of the most general, encompassing sources: emotion and imagination, of course, but also:
There are too many more to list—people and places are among my two favorites—but from here, they continue to overlap. Most great writing incorporates many of these sources. But often, I suspect, they are most notably prompted by one—by a single thought or observation; by a particular memory or question. Paying attention to and cultivating all these types of sources on a regular basis may open a realm of opportunity so wide and far-reaching that, soon, you’ll find there is so much work to be done, enough for seven lifetimes. You’ll have no choice but to sit at your desk and do it.
And hopefully, inspiration will be the breath giving life to that work.
Ioanna Opidee teaches writing and literature at Fairfield University, where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing. Read more from Ioanna here. ABC’s of Writing