As artists, the word "inspiration" conjures up images of some mystical force that transcends the logical mind, and through some spiritual process we are endowed with a connection to the infinite that delivers us sublime works of fiction. Or does it?
Inspiration to me has been used so many times that it's almost lost all meaning. It's really on par with the terms "god" or "love", where each has been used so many times that no one really knows what they even mean anymore. Is god some mystical bearded man that lives in the sky? or does it simply mean a form of infinite energy? or is it the Higgs Boson? And what about love? Is love two teenagers fooling around in the back of a car? Is it an insecure male who thinks the girl he saw on the bus is the love of his life? Or is it a couple whose been married for 60 years?
Inspiration follows the same tune. Inspiration can just be a happy feeling, it can just be a motivation to start writing (perhaps driven from eating healthy that day or digesting a dose of caffeine), it can really be any type of emotion that leads naturally to putting finger to keyboard.
I say (excuse my french), fuck inspiration. Are you inspired 4 times a week to get up and jog or lift weights? No, but you do it because you know it will prolong your life, and possibly make you look attractive. Are you inspired to get up for work in the morning? Hell no, if your anything like me, the moment the alarm goes off you begin to question your entire existence. So why should writing be any different? If you wait for inspiration to strike, you're going to get nothing done, and you won't become a writer.
You need to approach your writing like you do any endeavor in your life. You got to "put the balls to the wall", and dig in if you want to see any kind of success. And really, its not that hard. Even if you only wrote 3 times a week, at 600 words a pop, which would take you what? 45 minutes to do if you type slowly? That would be 8,000 words a month, which would produce a novel sized piece of work in 6-8 months. If you did that without fail for 3 years, you could have 4-5 novels written, and I'm being conservative here. If your serious about being successful then you have to write more then 2,000 words a week, but if you can't, well, at least you can have 6 novels written.
My point here is that some days your not going to want to write, and some days your writing is just going to suck. But you got to do it. Because it's the crunching of the keys, in a regular routine, that produces results, and you also got to know that the first draft is the easiest bit to do. Just pump it out already! It's the editing process and the subsequent query letters that are the real hard part. So get it done.
So go get it done!
Inspiration to me has been used so many times that it's almost lost all meaning. It's really on par with the terms "god" or "love", where each has been used so many times that no one really knows what they even mean anymore. Is god some mystical bearded man that lives in the sky? or does it simply mean a form of infinite energy? or is it the Higgs Boson? And what about love? Is love two teenagers fooling around in the back of a car? Is it an insecure male who thinks the girl he saw on the bus is the love of his life? Or is it a couple whose been married for 60 years?
Inspiration follows the same tune. Inspiration can just be a happy feeling, it can just be a motivation to start writing (perhaps driven from eating healthy that day or digesting a dose of caffeine), it can really be any type of emotion that leads naturally to putting finger to keyboard.
I say (excuse my french), fuck inspiration. Are you inspired 4 times a week to get up and jog or lift weights? No, but you do it because you know it will prolong your life, and possibly make you look attractive. Are you inspired to get up for work in the morning? Hell no, if your anything like me, the moment the alarm goes off you begin to question your entire existence. So why should writing be any different? If you wait for inspiration to strike, you're going to get nothing done, and you won't become a writer.
You need to approach your writing like you do any endeavor in your life. You got to "put the balls to the wall", and dig in if you want to see any kind of success. And really, its not that hard. Even if you only wrote 3 times a week, at 600 words a pop, which would take you what? 45 minutes to do if you type slowly? That would be 8,000 words a month, which would produce a novel sized piece of work in 6-8 months. If you did that without fail for 3 years, you could have 4-5 novels written, and I'm being conservative here. If your serious about being successful then you have to write more then 2,000 words a week, but if you can't, well, at least you can have 6 novels written.
My point here is that some days your not going to want to write, and some days your writing is just going to suck. But you got to do it. Because it's the crunching of the keys, in a regular routine, that produces results, and you also got to know that the first draft is the easiest bit to do. Just pump it out already! It's the editing process and the subsequent query letters that are the real hard part. So get it done.
So go get it done!
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