While Waiting For Inspiration

I recently read something Corey Doctorow said in an interview:

It’s not that you can’t be a great writer who only writes when inspiration calls, but you’ll never be a happy writer if you only write when inspiration calls. Inspiration is unpredictable. And if writing is the thing that makes you happy and sane—or it’s one of the things that makes you happy and sane—but you can only do it when this unpredictable lightning strike happens, then you’re not going to be happy and sane. You’re going to spend a lot of your time moping around, waiting for lightning to hit you. One of the things I’ve noticed about writing every day is that there are days when writing that page feels like flying. Like the hand of God reached down and touched my keyboard, and every word is just pure gold. And then there are days that I feel I’m writing absolute, totally forgettable junk that shouldn’t have been committed to phosphors, let alone saved to disc. The thing is, a month later, you can’t tell the difference. The difference between a day when it feels like you’re writing brilliantly and a day when it feels like you’re writing terribly is entirely in your head, it’s not in the prose.

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1 Response to While Waiting For Inspiration

  1. Dee Andrews says:

    It’s great to hear from you, Ray!

    I’ve been really busy the past couple of weeks, so am just now catching up with you here. Sorry to be so long in commenting.

    I’m in Abilene this week visiting with my mom, so hope to spend some time catching up with everyone’s blogs and commenting a lot.

    I LOVE this quote by Doctorow! I’ve never heard of him, so went to your link you had here and read through a bunch of the interview. Sounds like a really interesting guy.

    Hope you’ll have the chance to post some more this summer. As you know, I try to stop by every day or two to check on your blog.

    Cheers & Blessings to you today!

    Dee

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