Inspiration
Created | Updated Oct 20, 2010
I once read a column in a London (UK) free magazine – those things they hand out outside Tube stations that anyone with a right mind and decent taste would avoid like a plague – that began something like this:
"It’s a cardinal sin of columnists to open their column with ‘So I was sitting down, trying to think of something to write for my column…’"
He proceeded to do just that, and ended up spinning a very uninteresting column indeed. Possibly one of the worst I’ve ever read.
You see, inspiration’s like that sometimes. It needs reminding that it should be there, and it often takes hours to catch up with the actual action of writing. In the real world, I earn my bread and cheese as an editor and sometime writer (anything from interviews for magazines to – cross fingers – scripts for television), and sometimes you just have to sit down and type "This is a very hard thing to do. It’s Sunday afternoon, and it’s sunny outside and I just don’t want to do this, but you want to read this, so I suppose I should." And then you just squeeze out any old rope, and sit back and wait for the cheque to come through the post.
Of course, there are ways to be inspired, there are muses in the most unlikely places. The muse of money, when you’ve been hacking out stuff for the years I have, is sometimes quite a powerful motivator. Well, I’d like a holiday this year, but I’m in debt up to my eyeballs – the more I write, the more likely I’ll get that holiday.
The muse of alcohol can’t be underestimated: only last week, I wrote a little feature for a magazine, with help from an equally lubricated friend, with only an orange (yuck) pen, a tatty notebook and three pints of Caffreys as tools.
Love is a muse, and sometimes even the person you love can be a muse. But there’s a fundamental problem with this. I was once inspired to write a lovely, lilting, clever, inspiring poem by my partner at the time. I loved it; he loved it. Then, a year or so after we broke up, I read it again. Now it must be noted I felt no bitterness towards this man, indeed we are still now very good friends – so I have nothing but fond recollection for our time together, particularly the time around when I wrote the poem. But, as I said, I re-read the poem later. It was cack of the highest order. Pure cack. My partner now, who is the most wonderfully unromantic man on the planet, has warned me that ‘We don’t do poetry’. Which, considering the results of my last effort, is fine by me.
Drugs can be a muse. I’m told. The only drugs I do are the traditional alcohol and nicotine – which are only in a muse insofar as increased intake of either costs a lot (see ‘money’ above) – and the odd spot of marijuana. This latter vice is about as far from a muse as you can get. The only things it inspires you to do are sleep, eat lots of inappropriate food, and giggle unnecessarily. No Doors of Perception opened here, just the Door to the Bathroom if I smoke too much.
Plagiarism’s sometimes a powerful muse. But I’m sure someone’s said that before.
Sheer desperation works, too. I once had to write a feature about a hoary old BBC science fiction series called ‘Blake’s 7’, and – just because I couldn’t think of anything else – I ended up favourably comparing it to Shakespeare.
Brand new shiny iMacs, also, can be inspirational. I can’t keep my fingers off this one.
It’s different for everyone. What drives you to put quill to parchment and communicate some new idea can be as individual as that idea itself. You can find inspiration in many, many different places. Look high, look low.
Just don’t look here.
"It’s a cardinal sin of columnists to open their column with ‘So I was sitting down, trying to think of something to write for my column…’"
He proceeded to do just that, and ended up spinning a very uninteresting column indeed. Possibly one of the worst I’ve ever read.
You see, inspiration’s like that sometimes. It needs reminding that it should be there, and it often takes hours to catch up with the actual action of writing. In the real world, I earn my bread and cheese as an editor and sometime writer (anything from interviews for magazines to – cross fingers – scripts for television), and sometimes you just have to sit down and type "This is a very hard thing to do. It’s Sunday afternoon, and it’s sunny outside and I just don’t want to do this, but you want to read this, so I suppose I should." And then you just squeeze out any old rope, and sit back and wait for the cheque to come through the post.
Of course, there are ways to be inspired, there are muses in the most unlikely places. The muse of money, when you’ve been hacking out stuff for the years I have, is sometimes quite a powerful motivator. Well, I’d like a holiday this year, but I’m in debt up to my eyeballs – the more I write, the more likely I’ll get that holiday.
The muse of alcohol can’t be underestimated: only last week, I wrote a little feature for a magazine, with help from an equally lubricated friend, with only an orange (yuck) pen, a tatty notebook and three pints of Caffreys as tools.
Love is a muse, and sometimes even the person you love can be a muse. But there’s a fundamental problem with this. I was once inspired to write a lovely, lilting, clever, inspiring poem by my partner at the time. I loved it; he loved it. Then, a year or so after we broke up, I read it again. Now it must be noted I felt no bitterness towards this man, indeed we are still now very good friends – so I have nothing but fond recollection for our time together, particularly the time around when I wrote the poem. But, as I said, I re-read the poem later. It was cack of the highest order. Pure cack. My partner now, who is the most wonderfully unromantic man on the planet, has warned me that ‘We don’t do poetry’. Which, considering the results of my last effort, is fine by me.
Drugs can be a muse. I’m told. The only drugs I do are the traditional alcohol and nicotine – which are only in a muse insofar as increased intake of either costs a lot (see ‘money’ above) – and the odd spot of marijuana. This latter vice is about as far from a muse as you can get. The only things it inspires you to do are sleep, eat lots of inappropriate food, and giggle unnecessarily. No Doors of Perception opened here, just the Door to the Bathroom if I smoke too much.
Plagiarism’s sometimes a powerful muse. But I’m sure someone’s said that before.
Sheer desperation works, too. I once had to write a feature about a hoary old BBC science fiction series called ‘Blake’s 7’, and – just because I couldn’t think of anything else – I ended up favourably comparing it to Shakespeare.
Brand new shiny iMacs, also, can be inspirational. I can’t keep my fingers off this one.
It’s different for everyone. What drives you to put quill to parchment and communicate some new idea can be as individual as that idea itself. You can find inspiration in many, many different places. Look high, look low.
Just don’t look here.
