THE WRITER’S EYE with Susan Beckham Zurenda and guest author, Scott Gould

Against Inspiration

This month Scott Gould writes about idea versus inspiration. Scott is an extraordinary author who has gathered such awards as the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction, a Next Generation Indie Book Award, IPPY Award for Fiction, and the Larry Brown Short Story Award. His novel Peace Like a River comes out this month, and I very much look forward to reading it. From the jacket copy: “A captivating exploration of forgiveness, redemption, and the enduring bonds of family, Peace Like a River invites readers into a world where love and loss intersect with the healing power of nature and introspection.”

I got to know Scott when I took a creative writing class he taught at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities many summers ago. I can attest he’s as good a teacher as he is a writer. I hope you enjoy his take on inspiration. I surely did:

I might as well just throw it out there…I believe inspiration is highly overrated. At the very least, it’s overvalued. Probably misused. Definitely misunderstood. If I had to point a finger at somebody, I’d blame the ancient Greeks. They were the ones who concocted that whole Muses scenario, nine goddesses who existed to spark creativity. They (whoever “they” is) even assigned three of the goddesses to poetry, so the art of writing got more than its fair share of inspiration-adjacent mythological creatures. The ancient Greeks convinced us that inspiration was something to be delivered, something we should desire…and wait for. And therein lies the problem: if you wait for a Muse to whisper in your ear, you’re going to spend a lot of your time not writing.

Part of the problem, I think, is confusing inspiration with having an idea. Ideas are as plentiful as tap water. If you’re a writer, you should be able to walk three blocks down any street and come up with a half dozen ideas for a story or a poem or an essay. That’s the job of a writer: to keep the eyes and ears open and notice the small things that other folks (the non-writers) simply miss or ignore. The snatch of dialogue from the waitress at Waffle House. The skinny, sweaty guy preaching on the corner of Main and Coffee Street. The crumpled envelope that someone accidentally dropped on the sidewalk. Those are all potential ideas for a piece of writing. They aren’t necessarily inspirational. They are starting points, tiny bits of the world to be mulled and fermented and ultimately woven into a story. 

For over twenty years, I taught creative writing at the SC Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. Each winter, my colleagues and I interviewed potential students. One of our standard questions was, “How often do you write?” Seven out of ten times, the answer would be, “I write when I’m inspired.” (Spoiler alert: that’s the wrong answer.) I remember asking this follow-up question so many times: “Well, you’re going to have to write every day if you go to school here, so what happens on the days when you’re not inspired?” 

You see, writing is a blue-collar gig. You must get your butt in the chair and do the work. But here’s the wonderful thing…When you’re doing the work, when you’re sitting in the chair, sculpting your idea, that is when inspiration might come calling. You have a main character, and you suddenly realize he should have a limp because of a hunting accident twenty years ago. (Inspiration.) Out of nowhere, your protagonist develops a strange tick; she begins mispronouncing her children’s names. (Inspiration.) You bring in a secondary character who blows smoke rings in the shape of a heart. (Inspiration.) Inspiration is the by-product of doing the work. It can make a good idea better. 

I have a new novel that started with an idea, not with an inspired moment. I had the idea to take the protagonist from an older book—a linked collection of stories set in the 1970s (Strangers to Temptation, Hub City Press, 2017)—and age him fifty years to see how he’d changed (or how the world had changed him.) The result is Peace Like a River (Regal House Publishing). When I sat down to work on this idea, interesting things began happening. Was the dead grandfather’s artificial hip joint an inspired detail? Maybe. Was the laid-back, feral cat named Willie Nelson inspired? Could be. Do I think a Muse snuck in the front door and tickled my ear? Not a chance. Writing is not magic. It’s a job. It’s hard work. And if you work hard, good (perhaps inspired) things happen.

My suggestion? Don’t bide your time waiting on inspiration. Spend it working on a good idea. The inspiration will take care of itself.