Writing and the Creative Life: Perspiration and Inspiration

Sometimes it’s all about the work. Sometimes it’s all about the un-work.

An excellent book: “Stoking the Creative Fires: 9 Ways to Rekindle Passion and Imagination” by Phil Cousineau. The very first paragraph of the first chapter has a great description of creative inspiration:

Inspiration is a flash of fire in the human soul. Consider the marvel: the inrush of spirit, the flash of an idea, the flame of insight, the spark of imagination. It’s the Aha, Eureka, and Hallelulah moment all rolled into one. Inspiration is a message-in-a-bottle from the distant shore, a window into the other world, a tap of the muse’s finger, the grace of the gods. It comes when you least expect it, when your defense are down and your vulnerability up. It arrives in a dream, a conversation, a brainstorm — and leaves with out warning.

No doubt, writing is work. A daily grind. The challenge of depositing derriere on chair often the biggest struggle of all. It is making something out of nothing, putting black words down on white space. Pounding out pages. Slaving over each word.

So much of that is about intention, persistence, practice and study. Just describing it this way engenders a sense of weariness.

Compare to Cousineau’s description. Fire, marvel, inrush, spirit, flash, flame, insight, spark. That speaks to the vibrancy and spontaneity of creativity.

How to balance the two: Perspiration and Inspiration?

Oftentimes inspiration emerges from the work. Punching our way through the process. Hammering away at a scene over and over and over again. Grinding away at a variety of plot options. Our perspiration can yield insights, either a sudden flash or slow rising sense of awareness.

But sometimes, we have to step away. We have to cede control to other forces of nature. We can’t solve everything by slamming up against the story. We have to open our imaginations, a quest for the fire of inspiration outside the tiny perimeters of our writing space.

Get up. Go. Get out. Depart our story world for a while. Change of scenery. Change of pace. Change of head space.

Because the maddening truth is… sometimes inspiration has nothing to do with our physical labor of fingers on keyboard. Rather it has to do with letting go.

So maybe the question isn’t so much about how to achieve balance. Perhaps it’s more about embracing both. The ability and willingness to throw ourselves fully into one, then the other.

Sometimes it’s all about the work.
Sometimes it’s all about the un-work.

As Cousineau writes:

So inspiration may be an unpredictable friend, as inscrutable as an oracle and fickle as a weathervane. But if you’re serious about your own creativity, you have no choice but to try to make it…well…scrutable, to salvage a wonderful old word. What you can do is improve the odds that your spirit will be moved by being alert to whatever form inspiration may take.

You may learn more about Phil Cousineau on his website here.

Writing and the Creative Life is a weekly series in which we explore creativity from the practical to the psychological, the latest in brain science to a spiritual take on the subject. Hopefully the more we understand about our creative self, the better we will become as writers. If you have any good reading material in this vein, please post in comments. If you have a particular observation you think readers will benefit from and you would like to explore in a guest post, email me.

For more Writing and the Creative Life articles, go here.