To be inspired: we know what it means, even how it sometimes feels, but what is it, exactly? Filled suddenly and often helplessly with renewed life and energy, a sense of excitement that can barely be contained; but why some things—a word, a glance, a scene glimpsed from a window, a random memory, a fragrance, a conversational anecdote, a fragment of music, or of a dream—have the power to stimulate us to intense creativity while most others do not, we are unable to say. We all know what it was like to have been inspired, in the past; yet we can’t have faith that we will be inspired in the future. Most writers apply themselves doggedly to their work, hoping that inspiration will return. It can be like striking a damp match again, again, again; hoping a small flame will leap out, before the match breaks.
~ Joyce Carol Oates, The Faith of a Writer
Photograph by Mary Ellen Mark
Do you strike the damp match, or wait for inspiration to strike you?
ummm…yes?
there’s no one answer for me here. sometimes i go all out, but it’s been a long while since any going-all-out. i have completely ignored sparks. buried them. and then have been convinced that they may not return. (which is ridiculous, i know.)
your post reminds me a family vacation years and years ago on a beach when the whole-fam-damily would stay in one house. aunts, uncles, cousins, all of them. more adults than not were smokers, but i was still sneaking my cigarettes. i remember having one smoke and a half-used pack of matches and taking off for a walk along the beach. my plan was to make it to the dunes way down the stretch where there were no houses and no fear of being caught. i stood behind a dune and could not make one of those matches stay lit long enough to get from the pack to the end of my cigarette. match after match. i just remember sitting there looking out at the water and thinking, “what kind of an idiot brings a pack of matches to light a cigarette on the beach?”
a 16 year old girl apparently. (that 11 year old w/ the kick-ass eye-liner looks like she knows better than a pack of matches at the beach. she’s probably got her own zippo with the word BADASS etched in some fancy script across the front.)
Sometimes my questions are so incredibly lame, but that’s how damp my matches are today. And then my friends come to save me and write beautiful stories that fill me up.
(You think eleven? I was thinking from the roundness of that tummy, she can’t be more than eight. . . . The tilt of her wrist makes my throat ache, for all the years she’s lost.)
i had to go 11; my daughter’s 8–too close for comfort. but you’re probably right. what about those press on nails?
and yes, the tilt of that wrist. heartbreaking.
i knew girls like that when i was a boy. not many of them. there weren’t many of them. but they were scary, so sophisticated, so edgy, so knowing. the sort of kids whose streets my god-fearing parents would forbid me to cross. too cool for school. and doomed.
I think I do both. For example, up til now most of my blog pair ideas have come to me from different places and caught my attention (not allows awe-inspiring inspiration, but attention getting). At this moment I find myself trying to force some ideas I have into a post, but it’s not working. Seems the match is sopping wet.
I hear you, sister. I gave up writing my post tonight and turned to JCO, with whom I am completely obsessed.
I do both, too.
Unfortunately, I’ve been working on a synopsis, and my matches are in the toilet.
I’ve been working on a synopsis too, for a book I haven’t written yet. Jinkies.
It’s the girl in the background I’m looking at. Identifying with. Peripheral and confused. I started stealing cigarettes when I was 9. I probably looked like a cross between these girls– sassy pose on the outside, wide-eyed alarm inside. (Sorry. I ignored your question entirely.)
Definitely, wide-eyed alarm inside. I remember one of the older neighbor boys caught me staring at his crotch once—70′s jeans, alarm bells clanging—and called me out on it. He must have thought it was a come-on but what I was thinking is, What the hell is that?
If I strike a few damp matches I give up, go away, get physical. There’s no use in fretting about the flame. It comes always back.
Exercise is almost mystically helpful in writing. If I’m stuck and go out for a long walk, I almost always come back with something—or at least I’ve settled down enough to go back to my pages and try again.
It really does help. My “retreat” last week included daily exercise, sweat, deep breathing. A key to the success of the week.
“Do you strike the damp match, or wait for inspiration to strike you?”
I keep my matches dry.
Spoken like a man.
XO
That photograph is so disturbing, on so many levels.
For me, observing the world around me is the best source for inspiration. I can while away the hours waiting for it to come knocking on my door. The simple act of walking outside steers and sparks me. I open my door and my heart is suddenly open, too. Funny how that works.
I feel like that when I have a camera in my hands. Maybe I should carry one more often, or more deliberately.
I can get started without the lit match, but after some hours I need that damp match to light or I start to lose steam. Experience tells me to sit down and do the work and the sparks will come. Doesn’t make it any easier.
Yeah, this exactly. I’ve been striking matches for months now and I still can’t find a voice for my WIP. I am beyond discouraged now and have no idea what to do.
My most solid solace is knowing that whatever I write never ends up the way it started, that it always comes together in the end. And this is the case no matter how easy or hard the beginning writing is. Sometimes I start with what I think is the most brilliant of ideas, but by the final draft the light has shifted and is shining in a whole other direction I never saw coming.
It’s this magic that keeps me going.
Keep going.
I went into this project with that kind of confidence, having started with such a dog’s dinner with my last book. But now . . . I dunno. I’m beginning to lose heart. Maybe this story is beyond my ability to write it. Which fucking sucks.
averil, if you could do the first one, you can do the second one. it’s just a matter of soldiering on.
you say you can’t find a voice for it. i believe the voice is there. it is inside you. it is not hard to find. it is closer than you may think. it wants out. open and let it out. it will flow like a river in flood.
Ah Tetman. I thought the voice was in there somewhere, but now I’m not so sure. I’ve been trying for months and I’m showing up and putting in the work—it’s just not happening.
My editor should have book one back to me around the end of the month, and I’ll be working on that for a while. Maybe that will help. At the moment I’ve got fuck-all.
If I’m in the mood to write, but have no real inspiration? I write anyway. Often, just starting will bring something to the fore. Or I find a writing prompt and something develops from that.
That’s a good habit for a writer: write and hope for the best. Hell, sometimes it even works.
Flint.
Ba-dum, dum.
If you’ve got a flint to light your inspiration, consider me jealous.
A little of each for me. But the inspirations that come when least expected are the ones that make writing fun. Those are the ideas that are so unusual (for me) that they start to write themselves.
I think this is what JCO means when she describes past inspirations; you know it’s possible because you’ve done it before, but trying to recreate the magic can be an exercise in frustration.
I read this while listening to J.K. Rowling on Charlie Rose’s PBS show for the third time. I think I’ve fallen in love with her. I agree with her (and every other writer whose said it) that if we waited for inspiration we wouldn’t write much. She also spoke of needing to get away from writing one thing for a while. That made me relax a little about how getting sick and more tired than usual has done something to my flow. For all I know, I got sicker because I needed the break before I was forced to take it.
Now I ache to write other things, specific things, but my mind wants to slap me on the wrist, because my biggest problem is that I can’t attempt to sell what I haven’t finished. It’s time to try to change my life the only way I know how and climb out of this hole, so I have to finish it now, inspiration or not. I feel like I have to finish everything now.
I hope you’re feeling better, Ré, but it’s good that you’ve found the silver lining. Maybe the down time has given you a second wind.
It’s difficult when writing becomes tied to something else that is not writing. Like money, like trying to change your life. I find it distracting and unhelpful, but maybe for you it will become an impetus.
XO