Text: Solveig Hansen, 2018

WAITING FOR INSPIRATION
“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” Painter Chuck Close said that. Writing breeds inspiration. So when we run out of inspiration or motivation or maybe just procrastinate, we should hit the keyboard and compose one word at a time to get the engine going. Because writing is our job. Pilots fly their planes from here to there, surgeons operate one patient at a time. It’s their job. We don’t see doctors just standing there waiting for inspiration, or a plane stuck on the runway because of a pilot’s block. Although there is no “right way” to write, some goals and regularity benefit the creative flow. Write from here to there, be it half an hour or 2 hours or 500 words a day — or a blog post of 148 words about waiting for inspiration, while amateurishly waiting for inspiration.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.
— Chuck Close, from “Wisdom: The Greatest Gift One Generation Can Give To Another” by Andrew Zuckerman

 
Photo: Pixabay.com