Inspiration

This is the second essay by Peter on the intricacies of the English language. Here, he writes on where inspiration comes from, and why no amount of effort can quite summon it.

My first piece in the English language series talked about the quality of writing that appeals to a wider readership and qualifies for contests. Today, we talk about how to get such writing done.

Writing is hard work: it has been said to consist of “1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.” Many would-be writers of everything from a nephew’s thank-you note to a doting aunt for her birthday present to a harried graduate student with a delayed doctoral thesis, inevitably learn that every act in the laborious process of writing requires careful planning and thought if it is to be successful in conveying in a timely fashion what needs to be said. It must be fluent, convincing, sufficiently serious, and free from a host of common writing errors recalled from bygone English classes. There are countless authorities, pamphlets, handbooks of usage, and the like to help us write better by hard work, but there is very little we can do to acquire inspiration, without which we will remaåin stuck in neutral until we abandon the effort in frustration. Inspiration is a crucial ingredient in effective writing, but how are we to come by it?

What kind of an Ironist are You?

Charles Lamb, the Victorian essayist, antiquarian, and poet, considered it “foolish to suppose” that alcohol was or ever could be an aid to inspiration, according to novelist Peter Ackroyd, who adds, “He knew that it constrained his imagination, confining it to the layers of drunken perception.”