The Problem With Inspiration by Charlie Martin

Okay, I admit it. I’m a writer.

You wouldn’t think that would be a question: according to Authory, I’ve written more than 1000 published articles, everywhere from CIO to Stack Overflow Blog to Medium and of course PJ Media, which is kind of my home.

But for the last couple of years, I was really wondering if that should be “was a writer.” I was in that stage of writer’s block that James Blish called the “shit a brick” stage: every word felt like I was having to excrete a whole construction brick. On a good day it was a normal old red brick, but many days it was a cinder block.

Some days a jagged broken cinder block with lots of sharp corners.

Every time that happens — and believe me, this wasn’t the first time — it felt like I was having to learn to write all over again.

I have a gigantic collection of writing books, and pretty nearly every one talks at some point about staring at the blank sheet until you’re sweating blood wondering what to do now.

While you’re waiting for the drops of blood, it’s easy to fall into the trap of waiting for inspiration.

That’s not the way it works.

when I was just a baby, hardly 30 years old, I found a book called The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. Which I recommend whole-heartedly, with the caveat that it may sound like it promises an easy way around writer’s blocks. It’s harder than it looks. But it’s worth it.

Before that, when I was really a baby, in my 20s, I read another book, Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande.

Both Julia and Dorothea recommend a starting exercise toward becoming a writer. Julia calls it morning pages; Dorothea doesn’t give it a particular name.

It works like this: when you get up in the morning, write. Don’t write something unless there’s something in your head that is being insistent; just write. Julia says 3 full pages in longhand; Dorothea says type until you run out of words, but then push past that. (I alternate — I often write my morning pages on a computer, but I’m also likely to write longhand, especially if I’m having trouble getting started.)

The trick in both versions of this practice — I’m going to keep calling it “morning pages” — is that you have to keep going. You try not to pause, even if you have to write “I don’t know what to say I don’t know what to say” over and over. When that becomes boring, write how boring it is. Write how you feel silly. Write about anything that’s bothering you. Remember it’s just words — no one needs to see them but you.

What morning pages do is let you overcome the Inner Critic (that bastard.) You’re getting words down, with the explicit purpose of not caring if they’re good or bad.

But here’s the funny thing: once you start getting words down, more words come. And more.

When I signed up for Authory, my main purpose was to have an archive of what I’ve written because it would let me find things to which I wanted to refer. I was utterly astounded when it told me I had a thousand published articles.

Like “Whoa! How’d that happen?”

I can tell you that when I look back over today’s morning pages, I’ve written 880 words, I’ve talked out two projects I want to do, and I’ve planned out my next two articles for Pj Media (You can find them at PJ Media here. Be a sport and get a VIP subscription so you can comment and call me names. Special deal, you get a 50 percent discount with the promo code SAVEAMERICA.)

It certainly has something to do with starting morning pages 25 years ago, and Brande’s morning writing years before that.

Another book that’s only metaphorically about writing is One by Richard Bach.

It’s a fairly common SF trope, the pseudo-autobiographical Richard along with his then-wife Leslie Parrish (old fans will remember her as the eye-candy subordinate in the Star Trek:TOC episode “Who Mourns for Adonis”.)

In their seaplane, they fly across multiple parallel worlds, many of them reified metaphors. (If you haven’t seen it before, “reified” is a cool word: it means to make something abstract real and concrete. If anyone asks you, say you’re reifying.)

In One, Richard and Leslie visit the workshop and factory in which ideas are made, and meet the architect, an elfin young woman named “Tink.” She — Tink — practically cries with happiness when Richard tells her how important the products of her factory are to him.

Now, brace yourselves, I’m about to go woo-woo mystical.

The Ancient Romans had an idea of a genius.

The Romans thought of a genius as the special spirit of a place, a family, or a person, but any person, not just an Einstein or a Mozart.

That genius, however you think of it, is Something not in our normal mortal ken.

When Richard and Leslie met Tink, I think they were metaphorically meeting their genius. And what meeting Tink taught them was that their genius needed them as much as they needed her.

Writers need, more than anything, to be in touch with their own personal genius — and yes, you do have one, everyone does. Writing, the act of writing, is how we contact our genius. Once we get our Inner Critic (that bastard, did I mention the Inner Critic is a bastard?) out of the way and write, we’re letting the Inner Genius loose, and feeding it with words.

And that, at long last, is the point. You can’t wait for inspiration before you write. When you write, inspiration comes. You really can’t help it.