Inspiration - J.K. Conibear

Prompt: Write about “inspiration”

Is writing inspired, or a calling?

When I use the writing prompt “write about inspiration” it typically elicits a series of stories about a safe or interesting place, or a personal experience. However, what a writer calls inspiration, I believe is better defined as a calling. Writers have an inexplicable impulse to write that is accompanied by a feeling of divine influence. Inspiration is a trigger that unleashes a creative urge to share an observation or a story, an expression of the writer’s personality and personal preferences.

For some writers inspiration, or this calling, feels like a spiritual retreat, like a deep well of feelings, concepts and connections to people and events. For others, inspiration is a tangible location. It is a familiar place like a window with a view, or an old desk that relaxes and generates confident writing. Often, an unusual or unexpected place becomes the setting for a story or a scene, like the underground vegetable fields built under Tokyo, the ghost town of Calico, the forests of Olympic National Park.

Inspired by rituals

Where do you find inspiration to write? What are your rituals and incantations?

Where do you find inspiration to write?

In today’s world, writers no longer pray to goddesses for magical interventions and most prefer a healthy lifestyle to constant hangovers. Instead, they research practical guidelines to generate hours of blissful writing in the zone. A recommended technique to kick-start inspiration is the “manageable” approach. Beginning writers are advised to pen one or two paragraphs every day, or to target a consistent 500 word count every day. Other writers set aside a certain time of day to perform the rituals of writing. Some rise early to greet Inspiration at the crack of dawn, stealing time in the early morning before work, while other scribblers are habitual night owls. Many people never have a good time for anything, so they grab any opportunity, including hiding in cars during their kid’s soccer game.

Writers honor and seek inspiration with a mystical reverence. They experiment with ways to increase their artistic production. Modern writers set out elaborate traps for Inspiration with compulsive attention. They sit in a special chair, or write with purple ink. Some wear a fuzzy housecoat, or become superstitious about the placement of objects on their desk. Others must start the writing day with a hot beverage and an ample supply of celery sticks. Many need a deadline, or prefer the background hum of a café, or hours of uninterrupted silence.

What are your rituals and incantations?

Muses of Inebriation and Inspiration

When do modern writers do their best work?

When do modern writers do their best work? When they are driven by sadness? Drunk?

Writers have always fretted and worried about inspiration. The Greeks, Shakespeare and Keats yearned for nubile muses to imbue the air with a dreamlike mist of inspiration. There is also a belief that a cup of Inebriation pairs well with Inspiration. The Norse, the Greeks, Romans, the Chinese and the masters of Western literature honor a man’s melancholic or hard-bitten disposition, especially when it gives way to drink and despair because the hope is that this will fuel their best work.

My experience is that the “Drunken Poet” is an old myth. I’ve sat through many presentations by writers and they all have figured out a system to write when they’re rested, a time of day and a methodology that suits their lifestyle.

The Nine Muses of Inspiration

The first time I noticed inspiration it was sculpted into the sides of a sarcophagus in the Louvre museum. Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, and Zeus, the great womanizer, had nine daughters together; the Muses of Inspiration. These muses were carved for prosperity into the cold stone slabs of a marble coffin. The most famous are Thalia and Melpomene, comedy and tragedy, best known by their theatrical masks. The Greeks had oral tradition of literature, alive with music, including a muse for dance, Terpsichore. A writer was mostly about poetry, and they had several variations: Polymnis who fostered musical poetry (or hymnody); Erato, the muse of love poetry; Euterpe, the muse of lyric poetry, and Calliope, the muse of epic poetry. The muse Clio holds a writing tablet while she records history. The odd one out is Urania, the muse of astronomy. She’s the lone scientist and placeholder for future generations of academic publications.

The muses characterize the ancient ideals of a cultivated man, as represented by the likes of Socrates, or Homer. “According to a belief attested in Greece as early as the fourth century BCE, the practice of literature and philosophy, or daily intercourse with the Muses, ensured immortality and the soul’s salvation.”

Some things never change.

The moral is, since the earliest times, writers prayed or drank wine while yearning for inspiration. And, not content to be a legacy just in their own minds, they’ve all craved the immortal success of a best seller.