Building Inspiration

I’ve written frequently in this space about the essential role inspiration plays in the stories I tell, how without it my creative engine, no matter how well-built, has no fuel or fire. However, not only do I start most days feeling as uninspired as my page is blank, I often lay down the first few sentences as mechanically as a railway worker lays tracks. This is because when ideas present themselves to me, the most enthusiasm I can usually muster for them is the thought, “That might work.”

I won’t know until I’ve started, and to start I have to choose a first image or scene or declaration, and then get it down clearly and concisely. Fortunately, I like the mechanics of writing. I like building sentences, giving something as formless as a thought its own distinct structure, its own rhythm and pulse. I like how the sentence must serve the thought, become its honest and loyal emissary on the page. And I like how each sentence is a bit like its own story, how it has a beginning, middle, and end.

It’s the end where I most often find inspiration. No matter how complete a thought might be, there is always another that wants to follow it. As I lay down, carpenter-like, that first sentence, I rarely know what will come next. Sometimes I think I do, may have even mapped out a few inchoate sentences in my mind, but I’ve learned that I won’t know for sure until I’ve completed that first one. After all, a single, surprising word can change its whole direction.

And those are the words, as I’m hammering and crafting away, that first get my attention. They show me something about the thought I hadn’t known when I began assembling it on the page. Now what had seemed inanimate begins to feel alive and intentional, and soon I’m not making anything, I’m only finding it, seeing it, and describing it. I’m always at my best when my tools and tricks are in service to something discovered. That something is always waiting in the cracks between what I thought I knew and what could be learned, and in the fertile space that connects the end of one idea and the beginning of the next.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com