“Inspired” vs. “Real” Writing
There’s a large, fundamental comparison between Elizabeth Gilbert‘s speech and Sarah Allen’s Writing Spaces article. They each discuss the prospect of a writer‘s struggle with talent, and how it comes and goes (not to mention they both used the word “transcendent.” Such a good word, isn’t it?). This notion is incredibly applicable to writers, especially the ones that have had a brush with success, or just those of us who have had inexplicably transcendent (see, I used it, too!) moments in which our writing flowed perfectly from our minds with the definite words to convey exactly what we wanted to convey, sometimes without much effort. We don’t dwell on the origin of these moments of sagacity (at least I haven’t in the past) because of the initial reaction of excitement and self-praise. We automatically take for granted that it was solely our doing, a glimpse of the purest form of our talent, talent that may not always shine through very much.
According to Elizabeth Gilbert, this is our “genius” giving us a visit, “genius” being a term coined by the ancient Romans as a distant, mystical entity that lives in the walls of artists’ studios to give them brilliant ideas. Similarly, Sarah Allen assesses that “writing is like a battle with a ghost,” the ghost being “the inspired writer.” The inspired writer is in all of us, but only in a sheer outline, like a ghost is just a hint, a shadow of a person. You have to summon the ghost in yourself, an inner séance to get your talent flowing. If you’re writing and you’re not inspired, you’re just writing on the flat plane of existence that is your media (pen on paper or keyboard with a screen) and, well, what kind of transcendence comes from such a shallow involvement, with no inspiration? What can I gain as a person from writing with this disengagement? So we fight and push through to try to get some kind of significance out of writing, and if we’re lucky, that moment comes when the inspiration just strolls in like a late employee and we don’t have to push anymore. Once we get the results we were looking for, we are relieved and pat ourselves on the back for all the hard work, but what gave us that inspiration? It wasn’t us; if that were the case, we wouldn’t have had to push ourselves in the first place. This is something probably overlooked by the majority of writers, and even myself until I read Sarah Allen’s article and listened to Elizabeth Gilbert’s speech. Why is the idea of this type of divine intervention dead? I understand the concept of humanism and how it killed believing in divinity outside of ourselves; that’s an easy one. But we all know what it’s like to have writer’s block, so how can we accredit ourselves for unblocking it, when if we had the power to do that, we wouldn’t have writer’s block to begin with? I’m sure not everyone would agree with me, but considering this notion can be so helpful for writers and artists of all kinds.
When a separation is placed between the writer/artist and the talent, a level of humanity is restored to that person, not to mention a load of stress is taken off of their shoulders. According to this way of thinking, if your work doesn’t come out as well as expected, then it’s not entirely your fault. The divine intervention/genius/inspired writer just didn’t pay you a visit, and there’s not much you can do about that. On the other hand, if your work is an enormous success, then you shouldn’t let your ego inflate if you believe in this separation because it wasn’t entirely your doing. You did your usual half or three-fourths of the work as usual (not to undermine the work writers do; I work strenuously with my writing), but what makes it different is the inspiration that paid you a visit, whether you want to believe it’s God or a little fairy living in your walls like the Romans speculated. This solves the problem of the human weakness of narcissism sparked by outlandish achievements.
These ideas can be very beneficial to writers (as well as artists of another kind) and can save us from ourselves, so to speak, on both ends of the spectrum. This kind of thinking has definitely changed the way I write and look at my writing, and will make me more lenient with myself. I’ve never liked to just call it a “bad day” or “writer’s block” when I’m battling my “inspired writer’s” ghost; I always want to push myself and not let my mind frame allow such phrases, because then I will actually start to believe in them. But if I let go of the delusion of this kind of power, I will not only decrease my stress level but I will also be more able to embrace the act of writing as a peaceful thing and not a love-hate, tortured artist kind of thing, as intoxicating as that idea sounds.
With my faith in God, I don’t know why these concepts have never crossed my mind before. Maybe I preferred to believe that, for the most part, I was just an especially good writer (vain, much?). I’m still a skilled writer, I believe, but the foggy, previously unknown origins of all the great poems I have written in the past is much more clear to me now. And I feel okay saying that they are great, because I believe God gave me the inspiration to write those moving pieces of poetry, and I’m calling God great when I say that they are great. Writers are just the mediums for God to use when He wants an idea or a tidbit of history written down to be immortalized in time. It seems very lucid to me that something divine takes place when I have those special moments that writers crave. Maybe it’s just God barging in, making sure I write whatever it is that he wants written down by me, for a reason forever unknown to me.
