Expecting Inspiration

There is nothing better in life than being excited, eager, expectant, enthused, and engaged. As readers, we turn to stories for engagement, hoping the next one we choose will absorb us so fully that we won’t want to put it down, that we will be eager to return to it when we finally do, with the promise of its company like a light in our imagination to which we can turn if we start to feel our days have turned dull. We know there’s work to be done, chores to be finished, lists to be made, but life isn’t all duty and drudgery. There’s that book, isn’t there? A gift that requires nothing of us but our attention and for which we are rewarded with pleasure’s surprising ease.

If I know anything about excitement, enthusiasm, and engagement it’s that it can’t be manufactured. It may be what I want most, but I can’t demand it, can’t make it, and frequently what I enjoyed so much yesterday seems plain today. It can make life seem a little random and capricious. If I dwell on this reality in the wrong way, I’m prone to tell myself a story of tragedy and yearning. Oh, the joy I’ve known that is gone now, having arrived like a sparrow on my windowsill, then flitted away leaving me to wish for its return. What else can I do? I have no more control over sparrows than I do the weather or that happy accident we call inspiration.

It's true I can’t clap my hands like a potentate and see joy delivered on a platter. I can, however, expect it. For instance, I often start my writing feeling quite cold to the page. I may have an idea, but it doesn’t truly excite me yet. That won’t happen until I find something surprising in my story, occurring to me as if, yes, by accident, and yet very much a consequence of my sustained and deliberate attention. And deliberate about what? Expecting inspiration. I anticipate it. I may not know when it will come, or what form it will take, but it’s why I went to the page. I’m there to meet it, and as long as that remains my only real goal, I always do.

I am not unique. Readers pick up a book expecting to be engaged and inspired. They may not be, of course, but they want to be, and they are as open to that experience as they can be when they start a story. And if not that story, then maybe the next, the same as a writer may try one sentence and discard it when it doesn’t please her. So, the writer sits back in her chair, waiting for a better idea, something that, when it appears in the bright window of her mind, so surprises and delights her she wants nothing more than to be where she is right then, in the company of what she loves most.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
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