Inspiration - or 'The Muse'..?
Where do ideas come from? An extract from my book "So, you think you're a Writer".
Where do ideas come from? That’s a valid question. Indeed, it’s one I have been asked myself. The answer? Perhaps everywhere, and nowhere — which is, of course, code for ‘there is no right answer’. Or ‘we’re all different’. Or ‘it depends…’
“But surely” (I hear you claim) “there can’t be that many sources of inspiration.” Well, if you want to be reductive, let’s go down that route:
There are only two sources of inspiration: Internal and External
How’s that?
Okay, it’s simplistic, but hardly illuminating or helpful. If ‘external’ are those things that influence us from outside our individual selves and which act upon us, then ‘internal’ represent the ideas and notions generated by our own thoughts.
Still not enough. We need to go further, to sub-divide. Shall we say ‘Internal, passive’ and ‘Internal, active’? And I’m partly indebted to George Saunders for thinking about splitting the notion this way.
Internal, passive
These are ideas which come to us unbidden; that unexpected moment — in the middle of the night, in the shower, over dinner, on a bus etc. — when we ‘suddenly think of something’. And these ideas are generally unrelated to what we were doing at the time e.g. in the shower, on the bus etc.
‘A flash of inspiration’ — or a visitation from ‘The Muse’?
We have absolutely no control over such moments. They cannot be conjured up. They obey no laws, no patterns, no logical sequence of events.
For many people, ‘internal passive’ ideas are sacrosanct, nirvana, proof that the Muse exists — and that they are truly blessed having such insight. Those who rely on the internal passive to kick-start their writing cannot, therefore, operate in a methodical way; it is not uncommon for such people to be ‘go with the flow’ writers who wait for inspiration to strike. Their output may be sporadic as a result.
Internal, active
We sit down at our desk with a problem that needs to be solved: what happens next in this story? How do I navigate successfully between these two scenes? Should this poem rhyme or not? And so forth. These are examples of the ‘internal active’ idea i.e. when we purposefully try and come up with something. While this activity often has a specific focus (as in the rudimentary examples above), it could also be far more general: “what shall I write next?”
If you wanted to be a little more expansive, you might say that we are being active when we go searching for idea, whereas we are being passive when ideas seek us out.
And what about ‘external’ sources then? Surely there are similarities. Shall we subdivide those too?
External, passive
Again we are in one of those moments when we are not looking for inspiration. We are likely to be occupied in some other activity — indeed, anything other than writing. But then something happens related to the activity in which we are engaged or in our environment which strikes us as subject matter we could use creatively.
Let’s take riding a bus as an example If you were going along looking out of the window and had a sudden thought about a piece you were working on or had a notion to write a story about an astronaut in space, those are internal passive ideas. But if you saw something happen through the window or on the bus itself and that action immediately struck you as a thing to be interpreted and written about, then that is an external passive idea i.e. the active ingredient was ‘outside’ of yourself and was also not something for which you were looking.
External, active
As with internal active, external active is also you probing for an idea — but in this instance you are deliberately placing yourself in a situation where you are hoping the outside world will feed you material.
The best example I can think of is the café. You go to a café, order a coffee, place yourself in a location which gives you a good view of the clientele, then you open your notebook and scan for an idea. You might ‘steal’ the couple from the next table and invent a history for them, or the businessman who has just walked in looking stressed and hastily orders a takeout; you might overhear a nearby conversation and decide to use that as the bones of something. In essence, you have put yourself in a situation where you are saying “Okay world, here I am and I’m ready; feed me!”
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It is entirely possible that, of the four scenarios outlined above, you will have a preferred approach to harvesting ideas: you either ‘go looking’ or ‘wait for the Muse’, and do so publicly or in the privacy of your home. And that’s fine. Whatever suits you as a writer. But whichever way you are naturally inclined, the truth is that we have no control over any of the four:
Internal passive: you can have no knowledge as to when inspiration will strike; there could be months between good ideas — and then a bunch might come all in a rush.
Internal active: sitting down to ‘study’ and expecting to find an idea — and a good one at that — guarantees nothing; you could spend hours staring at a blank page or only surface the really dreadful.
External passive: given the source of this inspiration is external, not only can you not control your environment, you can never know when — or if — an idea might arrive. Luck plays a huge part: right place, right time…
External active: yes, you are being proactive in such situations, but you are still at the mercy of chance. What if all the patrons in the café are ‘boring’? What if there are no interesting conversations to be overheard?
No right answers, remember?
Relying on one sole source of inspiration for your ideas is simply nonsensical.
The good news for us is that these four channels are not mutually exclusive. Far from it. They are always present, always available. We cannot ‘turn off’ the passive channels — even when we’re asleep! — and it is only with the active ones that we have choice i.e. choosing to put ourselves in situations where we might ‘find’ something to inspire us: at our desk, or in a café, a park, the shopping mall.
And why is all this relevant? Firstly because it is useful to recognise where ideas come from; secondly, because it might encourage you to expand how you actively search for ideas and be less reliant on ‘magic happening’; and thirdly, because it ties back to to one of our primary questions i.e. what ‘type’ of writer you are.