On motivation, inspiration and leaving things to chance
A false dichotomy. Or: I do not want to write this, but here it is anyway.
I personally don’t believe in the idea of writer’s block. To quote the very excellent Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott:
If your wife locks you out of the house, you don’t have a problem with your door. The word ‘block’ suggests that you are constipated or stuck, when the truth is that you’re empty…
This was the first time I’d ever heard this mentioned about feeling stuck in the creative process - that actually, emptiness was the issue, and it is not a blockage at all.
In the seminal classic The Artist’s Way, author Julia Cameron also describes this feeling not as a ‘block’ but as a ‘drought’. She says:
In any creative life there are dry seasons. These droughts appear from nowhere and stretch to the horizon… our work feels mechanical, empty, forced.
I think we can put a lot of score in motivation to get us through these times. ‘Motivation’ takes the place here of ‘discipline’ or ‘practice’ - if only we are hit with the right motivation in the right moment, we will get going again, we can tell ourselves. But it is rarely so. In fact, running on empty - hoping that this magic will move us - is akin to grinding through the last drops of an empty fuel tank. We’re pushing, but what is being achieved?
I want to differentiate here between motivation and inspiration. The motivation to keep going when stuck can feel like an impossibility because of that ‘pushing’ quality. But if we say this is because we are empty, rather than ‘blocked’, we can start to see this differently. After all: if I am empty, I must refuel. Inspiration becomes the carrot, and not the stick. Let’s unpack this.
Motivation vs inspiration
I’ve said ‘versus’ but really, this is not a true dichotomy. Such as the engine is to car, motivation is to the artist. But inspiration is the fuel. Where do we find inspiration? How do we refuel? Rilke said (in Letters to a Young Poet):
For a creative person there exists no poverty, no place is poor and indifferent.
By this I took him to mean that everything we experience around us might well be ‘used’ or ‘useful’. There is no poverty, because our very task is to make every ordinary thing extraordinary. I always refer back to the incredible routine of Toni Morrison, who I often mention when I’m teaching students about creative practice. I do this because, unlike the most privileged artists of their day, Morrison created incredible art while still working a day job and raising two sons as a single parent. Here’s how she speaks about her craft (in Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Curry):
I am not able to write regularly… I have never been able to do that—mostly because I have always had a nine-to-five job. I had to write either in between those hours, hurriedly, or spend a lot of weekend and predawn time.
I don’t have children, so already I feel like I have way less of an excuse to give in to feeling stuck. However, as readers who have followed this Substack for a while will know, I don’t really condone ‘hustle culture’. There’s a whole other post on the horizon where I could talk about the intersection of money and art. But suffice to say for now, Morrison lays out a way of thinking about the art-making that I find refreshing, humble, and, best of all, highly practical. She says:
When I sit down to write I never brood. I have so many other things to do, with my children and teaching, that I can’t afford it. I brood, thinking of ideas, in the automobile when I’m driving to work or in the subway or when I’m mowing the lawn. By the time I get to the paper something’s there—I can produce.
This is where the role of inspiration comes to the fore - but not in the way the old Romantics might have thought of it. Inspiration is not the holy or magical arrival of the muse. It can, as Morrison suggests, arise from everything you experience and everything that comes before the moment you meet your medium. Inspiration is not a bolt from the blue, but an accumulation. We cultivate it, and therefore, refuel in the manner of a bower bird who builds his nest by carefully picking out bright blue objects and slowly integrating them into his home. We are building our home in our work with the systematic observation and selection of tiny details that have come from our everyday lives.
Leaving things to chance
I don’t seem to have a good relationship with luck. If, as Seneca said, luck is preparation meets opportunity, then I prepare the hell out of things. This is the only way I know how to be (thank you, anxiety). Still, bad luck does come out and bite me on the bum more than I’d like - bad timing, sudden changes of circumstances, etc. But that is life, and the best laid plans do fail. I can accept this in other areas of my life, because I am old enough and resilient enough now to cope.
But when it comes to my creative practice, I am less tolerant of this - I really don’t want chance or circumstance to have a say. I want to know that, come what may, I will return to the page. And to return to Rilke:
To be an artist means not to calculate or count but to grow like a tree which does not force its juices but confidently stands amidst the spring storms without any fear that summer might not arrive. For summer will come.
This faith - or trust - in the coming of summer is precisely what underpins our belief in our craft. We must grow this trust, certainly, in order to feel connected to our art-making even when it is not happening. Are we getting into ‘magical thinking’ territory here? I don’t want to sit back and say ‘well, the universe will provide’. This doesn’t feel compatible with my particularly anxious disposition, as much as I do genuinely feel that my writing will never leave me. I believe that, but I don’t take it for granted. It can be a jealous lover, and if I don’t give it the attention it demands, why do I simply expect it to remain with me?
Art lives in the Big World
Many things must be true at once. While I can turn everything I do and am into part of the practice, I also must ensure that the engine continues to run in the background. I build the discipline by meeting my work daily, expanding the possibility of what the ‘work’ includes, and then, behind all of it, growing my sense of trust. Because the goal is to make sure I’m still writing - and still enjoying it.
I was absolutely not in the mood to write this Substack this week. I have been distracted, tired, restless. But here it is, anyway. Because the exact issue I faced is part of the process. I met the page, I used what was real to me, and I trust that it will not always be so difficult. I continued on my way and I am quite proud of that. I don’t take your readership for granted. I don’t take this space for granted. To paraphrase my old favourite, Natalie Goldberg, it is the process of art-making and life that matters. Thank you, as always, for reading along with me and being part of the Big World.