Inspiration...or perspiration?

So, yesterday was National Poetry Day! A friend and fellow write Gill Kirk, posted this lovely poem by Charles Bukowski in celebration:

So you want to be a writer? - Charles Bukowski:

if it doesn't come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.

The poem provoked a lot of debate online, by myself and fellow creatives. To what extent can it be said that writing is all about seizing that moment of great inspiration and running with it? Obviously, there are those moments – those sudden flashes when the Muse (or whatever it is) seizes you and grabs you and you write, paint, compose or otherwise create in a blind whirling fury of inspiration. But it’s not all like that. In my experience, a lot of is hard slog. If I sat around waiting for inspiration to strike before writing a word, I don’t think I would get around to writing very much! Apart from anything else, the sheer pressure of feeling like every word I wrote was ‘inspired’ would be enough to paralyse my pen for life.

Thomas Edison, inventor of the lightbulb, famously said that ‘genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration’.  We writers would probably like to think of ourselves lying back on a chaise longue waiting for the Muse strike whilst we spout witty monologues, but unfortunately the reality is just not like that.

Perhaps it’s one of the reasons we’ve developed the myth – if that’s what it is – of the ‘tortured artist’ (of which Dylan Thomas, my literary hero is, of course, a prime example). The star who burns bright, but ultimately can’t contain their own genius and ends up burning out. But even this is a myth. In the biography of Dylan Thomas I’ve recently been reading, written by Gwen Watkins, Dylan’s friend and fellow poet Vernon Watkins describes his behaviour and public persona as a ‘mask’:

‘His infectious humour deceived everyone but himself. His method was not to retreat from the mask but to advance beyond it and in that exaggeration remain completely himself. He agreed readily with his detractors and did not in the least mind being misunderstood. Then, in the private dark, his exhuberance was subjected to the strictest control.”

And there’s the rub. Genius – if that’s what you wish to call it – is all very well, but it can’t be sustained indifferently. At the end, there is always the need to control. Dylan Thomas, it is well-attested, could write one hundred or more drafts of the same poem, often spending a day pondering over a single word before he was entirely happy with it. Inspiration – yes. Perspiration – most definitely.

As someone who aspires to write, the way I look at it is, like an athlete, I have to put in the practice, to learn the craft before it can become second nature enough to flow. I do a lot of writing exercises, I write an unbelievable number of terrible first drafts, I read and read and read until the rhythms of poetry become hammered into my brain. But then when it happens for real, when inspiration strikes, my brain knows what to do, instinctively. I don't have to think; it just happens because it has to, and that's when the good stuff writes itself.


This happens pretty rarely, to be honest, but when it does, it’s the greatest adrenaline high in the world. You look at the thing you’ve just written. You think: ‘Where the heck did that come from?’ Or you’ll be midway through writing a ponderous piece of prose when suddenly something takes over and it starts writing itself. Fifty or a hundred or two hundred and a thousand words later, you put down your pen.

Even then, the work isn’t finished. Because once you have your first draft, there’s still always work to be done. Sometimes my poems come to me in a stream of consciousness that I barely have to alter. Other times, they’re left on one side to come back to, often months or even years later. Sometimes, particularly for prose, I write multiple drafts. There’s no rulebook.

But the important thing is that I regularly show up. Every day I write something. As a good writer friend once said, it’s not rocket science. The more you write, the more chances you have, even by fluke, of producing something good. It’s the monkeys producing Shakespeare principle. Sort of.

I think what’s most useful in the Bukowski poem, though, is the implication about false motives. What am I really writing for? I’m talking about my poetry here. I’ve written paid journalistic pieces, and the process there is very different. It’s still creative, but much more ordered. You’re given a brief, you do the research, you write it up, you (hopefully) get paid. But creative writing is a whole different thing. There’s no brief, as such, though you can create one. If you’re lucky, you might make money out of it, but unless you’re the next JK Rowling, that’s absolutely not guaranteed. From my experience, if I set out to write Great Poetry, that’s when I produce my very worst doggerel. It can’t be forced. It has to grow, organically.

I think if I was writing for money or fame or any of those things, I’d have given up long ago. The fact is I write because I can’t help it. I’m an addict. I consume words and stories wherever I go, like a hungry worm. I write things in notepads, little phrases or word pictures or conversations or mini scenarios that have caught my eye. The idea of not writing, or not creating, is as alien as not breathing. It’s just impossible. If I tried it, I’d be dead.

Another of my favourite quotes is from Rumi:

"In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art."

I think this is closer to my own experience. It’s the act of falling in love with beauty and words that provokes me to creativity. It can’t be forced, or taught – though the craft of perfecting how you put the words together can be learned. But ultimately, that ‘spark’, the one that’s dancing inside our chests – that’s something that’s available to all.