What is inspiration? And do we need it once we have strong habits?
What drives us to start things isn’t what drives us to finish them
First some quotes:
“I learn by going where I have to go.” Roethke (The Walking)
“Poems come out of wonder, not out of knowing.” - Lucille Clifton
“Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.” - Pablo Picasso
As I draft this essay, it's Wednesday morning, about 6:30, and I like to publish on Friday nights before midnight. This morning I realized I hadn't even come up with a topic yet. It got me thinking about inspiration, where it comes from, and what I do when it’s gone missing.
Like most of my life projects, this Substack was started on a whim.
Another whim-based project of mine was HowWasTheShow.com where I ended up writing music and theater reviews with a team of writers for almost 10 years.
Momentum and habit are the kings of achievement. Inspiration is a mere prince of an outlying province.
My “rock and roll tours” where I attended many of Europe's greatest rock festivals over the course of a decade, were born of a whim. My typewriter collection. The resurgence of my interest in cassette tapes. All whim based.
But ask me about the inspiration once I’ve started something and I don’t know how to answer other than to say I cultivate momentum great enough to overcome the obstacles and inertia which (we all know) come with the territory of trying to accomplish anything at all.
Momentum and habit are the kings of achievement. Inspiration is a mere prince of an outlying province.
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This Substack is the outgrowth of a single post, born of curiosity to see how Substack worked. I wrote another post the next week, then another. I've now done this for almost four months.
Sounds like a habit. However, pessimists might call it an addiction, or more politely, an obsession. Whatever you call it, it works pretty much the same way.
The difference between a habit and an addiction (using drugs as an example) is a fine line. An Alvernia University article attempts to distinguish between the two:
“Probably the most important distinction between habit vs. addiction is how choice, to an extent, is still possible with habit-forming behaviors. When it comes to addiction, people generally have a harder time making decisions because of their dependence on a substance or behavior. Typically, these factors are linked to the rewards systems in the brain, which helps explain their overarching power in stripping people from the ability to make rational decisions.”
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Topics for this Substack used to pop into my head easily, usually by Sunday or Monday. The week’s topic would be clear based on a conversation with my wife or a colleague, or something that happened over the weekend.
Most people would agree writing is more a habit than an addiction. Writing regularly has sharpened my editing skills, and I feel I am getting better at producing articles in less time. As I approach 500 words (in the first draft), I feel energized, relieved, more awake, more alive, and all sorts of good things and no bad ones. (The coffee’s not hurting either.)
This week I lacked inspiration, and if I had to dig into why, I might identify lethargy, a low-grade depression surrounding getting older, waking up tired every day, side effects of becoming a new father again at age 58, the sense that some of the excitement of having a new baby is passed, the feeling of dread at all the things on the horizon for me and my family in the coming year. When I share these things at such a general level, I’ll bet many of you (especially the parents of young children) can relate.
I suggest nearly everything we do as we get older years becomes the outgrowth of habits we started establishing when younger and when our lives were more driven by inspiration.
But these things are always present at varying levels throughout our lives.
When I was young, inspiration for creative activity often sprang from falling in love or the anxiety surrounding that event. If not for my creative outlets, I would have exploded in less positive ways than fingers on the keys of a piano or on my typewriter.
I suggest nearly everything we do as we get older years becomes the outgrowth of habits we started establishing when younger and when our lives were more driven by inspiration.
These days, I write poetry because I want to continue building my body of poems, so I can submit them to journals, assemble them into books, etc. And because of discipline, I know the only way to produce that body of work is to write.
I’d argue inspiration is no longer as critical once you have developed a habit to sit down, start writing, and keep going until you discover the thing you didn’t even know you were going to write about.
In contrast to that idea, I’m reminded of the final scene from The Shining when we learn that Jack Torrance has been typing "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy" over and over again instead of writing his novel.
However, for people who are not insane, the result is usually different, and we may find something we maybe weren’t looking for.
Perhaps, as Maya Popa suggests in her series Wonder Wednesday, if we write with an openness to discover, perhaps that’s the best way to start.
Last week she wrote:
“From this “beautiful complication” arises wonder’s generative challenge for writers: to capture both the wonder-inducing event and the act of wondering itself without foregoing the feelings of admiration and confusion, that sensation of being “breached,” that wonder invites.”
Asking, “I wonder what I will write today” is as good a place to start as any. And the only way to find what you have to say is to sit down, start writing, and see where you end up.