The Myth of Inspiration
How real writers get their work done
Like many writers I started out as a reader, so I could only really judge the act of writing on finished work. Classic novels have a way of making writing itself look effortless, as if their authors knew what they were doing all along.
When writing struck me for the first time it came in the form of a finished poem. I was 16, I had an image in my head, and so I sat down at the dining room table and developed it. Because it felt so obvious and came to me so directly (“write this”), I assumed all writing would come to me like that. It has not.
After high school, I did a creative writing degree, then a magazine internship that led to my becoming an editor and a reporter. I have worked more or less full time in and around writing ever since. But most of my “real writing” has been done in the off hours — evenings and weekends, in the morning before work, in bars or coffee shops I stopped into on the way home. For a few months when I was working at the National Post in suburban Don Mills, Ontario, I wrote in What-a-Bagel, along the busy freeway, before hopping a bus to head home.
I think a lot of us carry an image of the successful artist as being alone in a room, lost in their own thoughts — so engrossed in the act of creation that they forget even to eat or sleep. At least, that’s how it’s portrayed in film. In reality, I am not sure that the conditions for writing we romanticize in our culture — log cabins in the middle of the woods — are good for mental health. (The Shining’s Jack Torrance may have been a murderous psychopath but one problem he did not ultimately struggle with was writer’s block.)
My mother is a musician, and may have contributed to this perception of creation by teaching me about composers like Beethoven, who continued to write music even after he was deaf, and Rachmaninoff. I assume that both men didn’t have to do dishes and laundry. After the release of his first symphony, Rachmaninoff suffered a breakdown and consulted a neurologist who, according to legend, forced him into a room until he came out with his next work, a triumph. But every time I listen to one of his earlier creations, the Prelude in C Sharp Minor, I think about the crashing motif Rachmaninoff designed for it, said to depict the experience of a soldier who has been buried alive, scrambling to get out.
Claustrophobia is what working to a deadline can feel like. The first few times I was given virtually unlimited time to write and a dedicated project, rather than produce a masterpiece, I mostly just choked. I didn’t know how you lived a day, didn’t know how to structure a long-form project, didn’t know what it would take to create it. I worked as hard as I could, rarely taking breaks, but for the most part I was rewarded primarily with anxiety, not results. What if it isn’t good? What if the editor doesn’t like it? What if I start and go down the wrong track and it becomes too late to reverse it? And so on.
I wish someone had told me before I started doing it professionally that real writers don’t write all day, every day. Most go straight for a few hours until they reach the final stretches of a deadline, a relatively small proportion of the time. The rest of the time writers are fitting in a workout, or having coffee with other writers, or trying to organize their pitching and invoicing systems (underrated), or working at their day jobs. The question of how to be a writer is how to be a writer when, like most successful writers , you actually spend most of your time doing something else.
At one point I was lucky enough to find a writing coach. After my initial attempt to write all day every day led to anxiety, she made me a schedule: I would start writing in the morning, then “meet a friend for lunch.” What? I asked the first time it was presented to me. It had never occurred to me that writers didn’t write all day, every day. To me, if you have a job to do, you just do it. There’s no lunch or shopping or whatever. But the truth is I was also blocked, delaying writing with further research and pushing the same words around and around.
It was only when I had been writing professionally for a decade, working on a book deadline, that I had to learn the true business of being a writer: schedule it. Nowadays I try to write for a minimum of twenty minutes, three times a week. Most of the time it ends up going on for longer than that; I do lose myself. And if I don’t get to it one day, I don’t worry. There will be time on the next writing occasion to catch up. There is time to write in transit, between appointments. It’s not too hard to get back into it. I only have to do twenty minutes. Who doesn’t have twenty minutes to do the thing they love?
Just don’t expect to write all day, every day and be productive. You’ll burn out.
Here are a few tips on setting up a writing practice I’ve figured out:
Pick the time that works best for you — morning or evening — and block that out. There is research on what timing works best for morning people vs. night owls. (If it helps you to have an accountability measure, set an alarm or schedule a meeting in your calendar with yourself.)
Set a low bar for your writing output. The goal can be 250 words a day or a commitment to write for a certain amount of time. These mini goals help us to get into what experts call a “flow state” where we eventually lose track of time and our surroundings. But in order to get to the inspiration stage, you have to show up for it.
Break up big tasks (“write thesis”) into small ones (“outline an introduction”) or even just do the research for one important paragraph.
Look back on your accomplishments. Making a date with yourself to write one evening in a coffee shop is a goal in itself to look upon with pride. Can you make a commitment to do that once a week, for a month?
Treat yourself more than you think you need to. A friend once told me she was going to treat herself to a movie when she finished a draft of her screenplay. I say, make time for the movie you want to see now. Just remember to get back to your writing schedule as planned.
In other words, don’t wait for inspiration to strike; make a date with it.
And remember, writers are defined not by the books they publish or the films that win Academy Awards. Writers are people who write. You’re working toward it right now.