Questions from a young artist and writer (answers from a young crone!)

Chapter header vignette
by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
for my new novel, Glimmerglass

I always imagine that if one person asks questions, there are others who would like to find out more. Here are questions I received today, followed by glances at possible answers... I claim no more than "possible answers" because I am just one small person on the face of the planet, and every artist would have a different set of answers.

How often do you feel inspired to work? How do you feel different when you’re writing than when you’re doing other things that need to be done in life? And I guess how do you get yourself into that place when you’re not there already.

*

If you sit around waiting for inspiration, you’ll stay a dabbler and never get to where you want to go. Search through the simple pleasures of drawing or inking or painting or writing, even if you have no idea where you are going. Move your hand--the mind may well follow. Inspiration might come from doodling and playing and jotting down notes. Inspiration might come from collecting your materials and then waiting in quiet.

Oh, it doesn’t matter “how often” you feel inspired. It's not ever about numbers. It just matters that you try to do your work—that’s the path toward the inspiration.

*

You're young. It's good to have humility before the great masters of the past. It's fine to look at work by your peers. But it's also good to have self-forgetfulness when making art, and that includes a kind of forgetfulness of all you admire--all that makes you feel small and that you cannot "get yourself into that place" and begin.

*

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.” I don’t recall that line from Van Gogh's letters, but I bumped into it on the web (so it may be truly his, or not) and think that’s a pretty good assessment of how to make art or any other thing in this life.

*

There’s a scene in one of my books that people have pointed to and asked about many times. A young girl is peeling an orange, a thing she has never done before, and the passage looks at an orange, the fragile veins around the segments and the inner lining with pith and the pebbled exterior and the seeds that seem to float inside the flesh. In terms of the writing, it’s all about seeing like a child. But that passage came about because it was the middle of the night, and I was trying to get work done but felt exhausted and blank—I wanted to get more done because my children were all blessedly asleep, but I would have to be up with them by 7:00 a.m. At that hour--at any hour--they would want a mother, not a writer. So I didn’t wish to waste an hour that I could use to either sleep or write. I went downstairs to the kitchen and fetched an orange and began to peel it slowly in front of my computer. I stared at that orange until it became magical, mysterious, seeded and alive with secrets. I then put the spirit of that orange in the hand of the young girl who had never seen an orange before.

That was how I started that night, by staring and seeing and forcing myself to move forward. Because I was a woman with three small children who had no time to waste on being inspired beforehand. The staring inspired me. The playing with words inspired me. The sitting down in the chair with intention to write inspired me. Inspiration is like a fountain—it will rise and flower into drops and flung water if you give it a chance. But to do so, you need to hush, look, and dream.

*

A feeling of richness and rightness often takes over when I’m writing. If it’s a poem, I might be surfing on Disch’s “lyric gush.” If it’s the first draft of a piece of fiction, I might be dipping and flying, following the thread of story. Then I’m a zany flying fish, skimming and swimming and reveling in the sea of words. So you’re right in saying that making art is just not the same as daily life.

At the very best, it’s being open to the Muse, the pouring life of the world, the Holy Spirit, the water from the fount at the end of the universe… (Mind you, golden moments sometimes come in ordinary life, and if you wish to do so and are quick, you may seize and make something of them.) As you go on and grow in your chosen pursuits, you will more and more be prepared and readied to catch the Muse, snare life, embrace the Spirit, or dip a pail from the fount. But the mere hunt for these precious, frolicsome things will lead you into the lands where inspiration trickles and streams.

And as a human being, you are made to find joy and truth and wonder and a thousand other contrary and tumultuous elements in creation. It’s that simple. Some find a creative satisfaction in teaching, some in reading, some in needle and thread, some in the unfolding mysteries of science, some in sacrifice for others. But we human beings are all meant to participate in some aspect of the ongoing creation that is our universe—the universe that is perhaps just one of many universes. So sit down in the chair and move the pen or move the brush: begin.

Katrina Kittle's writing class

I met Katrina at the Antioch Workshops this summer and can say that I like and recommend her. She's running an online writing class that starts very soon:

Are you interested in creative writing, but need a kick in the pants to finally start a project...or to finish one? Katrina Kittle's online class series "Inspiration and Motivation" begins September 3rd. This 5 week class is for writers of any level of experience. Each week will focus on some aspect of the writing life (such as creating and defending a writing schedule, and dealing with the inner critic) and loads of writing prompts to jumpstart ideas. If the time/dates don't work for you to interact live, you can watch the class recording afterwards whenever it's convenient! Details here: http://www.onliten.com/workshops.htm

The House of Words (no. 31): poet Hannah Stephenson on inspiration

Evidently there are many rooms
in The House of Words.
Today we wander out of the publishing wing
and into the room of the practical muse.
Poet Hannah Stephenson gives advice on
dailiness and inspiration.
Hannah blogs at The Storialist,
where you may find the results
of her advice and much more,
including many links to Hannah-on-the-web.

The Earned Eureka: Locating and Generating Inspiration

Any of us who write or create know that inspiration does not usually occur in one great flood. No angelic choir frantically signals the arrival of brilliance. No solar flare or lightning bolt shakes us by the shoulders, declaring, “WRITE!” And yet, at one point, we have all longed for that magical, triumphant moment in which we are channeling and discovering the world’s truest truths (à la Frankenstein or Einstein or Doc Brown).

Inspiration, fortunately or unfortunately, does not usually visit us in an instantaneous flash. Docs Brown and Frankenstein and Einstein are funny representations of this idea for me. They all came to mind when I thought about lightning-bolt-brand inspiration; intriguingly, none of these doctors are just sitting around, eating Thin Mints by the sleeve when their “Eureka!” moment strikes. If anything, those doctors have been working (and yes, eating Thin Mints) and thinking and researching--it’s just that we (the audience) can’t see this. Indeed, they have earned their Eurekas. The creative process doesn’t just zap and take charge of selected humans, leaving them to exclaim, “Great Scott!”

I would characterize the voice of inspiration as a whisper, a low murmur. Sometimes it is wordless. We barely feel its tug on our sleeve, its tap on our heart.

In order to create in any sustained fashion, we have to learn to listen. Four years ago, to write a poem, I would wait until I felt like I had an interesting idea. Hence, I would write about six poems a year, only two of them surviving my editor’s eye.

This is an example of not listening to myself. I had other ideas throughout that time, certainly--but I quickly dismissed those which did not seem meaningful. What a disservice this was to my writing! These days, I write at least four or five times a week (I post every weekday at my poetry blog, The Storialist, and have since July of 2008). One of the questions I’m asked most often is, “How do you keep yourself inspired almost every day?”

Because I have made the decision to write this often, and to share it this often, I keep writing. I never wait to feel inspired. I focus on generating this inspiration myself (because that’s where it comes from, I think---a conversation between your subconscious and the adventure of life and encounters).

So how do we locate and create inspiration? Delightfully, this is a skill that we can develop (it is not an innate talent we are born with or without). Mostly, it is about noticing our own responses, and realizing that they are already meaningful. What you notice, as opposed to what I notice, is meaningful because we do not observe the world through the same brain or eyeballs or ears.

It’s the same question I ask my students (in first-year composition courses) when they are looking a text, and don’t know what to write. “What do you notice?” I ask. And the next question is, “What is interesting about what you have noticed?”

As artists, those questions are powerful tools for us. I write down ideas in a little notebook (you have one, too, I think), but these ideas are not “ideas for poems.” They are bits of language that are trapped in the drain of my ear, pieces of my day that speak to me. Here’s what one page in my book says: “Your heart, a freeway.” “The LA freeway, the veins of a god.” “What you are desperate for creates a rattle in your core.”  “Whitewater.” “Do something every day that scares you.” “Black cows on a green hill.”

These are scrawled (in my rather hideous handwriting) without editing or evaluation. The moment a thought appears to me like this, I write it down. Not all of this becomes poetry, clearly. But none of it is wasted. This is my practice of being more present in daily life, which is what poetry helps me do. This is me listening to myself.

Black cows on the slope
courtesy of sxc.hu and Clodia Porteous,
who takes pictures near Adelaide, Australia.
She and her husband have a tiny boy named Bodhi,
and Clodia is a part-time architecture student.

The me-of-four-years ago would think, “Black cows? Who the hell wants to read what YOU [I] say about cows in grass,” or “Why do you keep writing about driving? Who else cares about you in the car?!” or “Why don’t I just eat more Thin Mints instead of trying to write anything intelligent--I know it’ll be mediocre.” Now I just write it down. This is my research.

In my blog, I also link to art that has somehow sparked each poem; there is a conversation happening between my words and the piece of artwork. Art turns me on. It turns my brain on. I spend so much time sifting through artist’s sites and looking at art in galleries (also glorious research). When I see a piece I am drawn to, I start in on myself. What do I notice? What is interesting about what I have noticed? What is compelling about that specific observation? What does that remind me of? When have I had this thought before? What emotion is linked to this thought? Where else does this idea occur? What is another way to explain this same concept?

This is not an interrogation; it is an effort to locate inspiration. The painting or the cows on the grass---those are speaking to me because I am speaking to myself (about the world). It just sounds like it is coming from out there. We just have to decide to listen, to respond.