Seeking Divine Inspiration

Reading Plans for 2018?

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Paul Whybrow

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Jun 20, 2015
Cornwall, UK
I haven't ever heard of anyone praying for divine inspiration from the patron saint of writers and journalists, Saint Francis de Sales, but I'd hazard a guess that authors ask his boss, God, for help—or seek it in alcohol.

As comedy writer Jane Wagner observed:

When we talk to God, we're praying. When God talks to us, we're schizophrenic.

Some writers rely on a mascot for solace, keeping it nearby when they're working. As we're advised to develop a hide as thick as a rhinoceros, to cope with criticism and rejection, little plastic models and stuffed rhino toys are popular.

Whatever deity or muse you seek creative inspiration from, it's still syphoned through your inner psyche as an author—and you've got the hard work of actually interpreting your ideas in words.

I refer to a folder of quotes and poems that I've collected over the years when I'm in need of a boost to my fortitude. Observations such as this from Andre Dubus III help to keep me going:

I think what I love most (about writing) is that feeling that you really nailed something. I rarely feel it with a whole piece, but sometimes with a line you feel that you really captured what it is that you had inside you and you got it out for a stranger to read, someone who may never love you or meet you, but he or she is going to get that experience from that line.

I recall the enjoyment that I got from reading Dennis Lehane, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Hoffman and Michael Connelly and knuckle down to write something decent. Another way of motivating myself is to recall terrible writing, such as Jeffrey Archer; this really lights a fire under me!

Do any of you send out prayers for inspiration?

Or, do you turn to famous writers as a way of recharging your own creative batteries?

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I have trouble in nailing anything in writing. What I commit to writing today I might express differently further down the line. All writing is a work in progress and if it's published, it's been arrested in snapshot. Pickled in progress. For inspiration I might pray to the spirit of diapiric extrusion by Hercyinian orogeny. Cause it rises up from the inside like the granite batholith under Cornwall.
 
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Short answer, no! However, for me, it's like if I don't write, then fictional characters pop into my mind, either from books or TV shows. I interpret this as my Muse demanding I realise that I should be writing, and get too it! Not exactly inspiration in the conventional sense, but then I've never been very conventional or conforming... :D
 
I refer to a folder of quotes and poems that I've collected over the years when I'm in need of a boost to my fortitude. Observations such as this from Andre Dubus III help to keep me going:

I think what I love most (about writing) is that feeling that you really nailed something. I rarely feel it with a whole piece, but sometimes with a line you feel that you really captured what it is that you had inside you and you got it out for a stranger to read, someone who may never love you or meet you, but he or she is going to get that experience from that line.

I rather like this.

I am lucky in that I do have a faith and so tend to have a regular chat with the Big Fella upstairs going on most days, given that I am under no-illusions about my many and varied defects of character along with my self indulgent narcissism always hovering in the background, ready to snatch defeat from the jaws of even the smallest of victories. I need to have a higher power in my life as a matter of preservation! I am weak. It is as simple and bloody annoying as that. If I could do it all on my own then I would. But I cannot. I have to believe in something much, much, more powerful than I am and believe that He has my best interests at heart, even if I struggle to understand the logic of how life plays out.

In terms of the writing then I believe that it pleases my divine Boss, with the rather comforting notion that He is more interested in the application as opposed to any worldly success but it is Norman my Muse who is the one who gives me the biggest kick up the arse because he will throw up a solution or a change of tack or a whole range of other little insights or suggestions and I have to just get on with it. Also, like all the best medicines, I feel that the act of writing sometimes needs to have a nasty taste to it and that we have to take our daily dose, whether we like it or not. Writing is good for me.
 
For inspiration I might pray to the spirit of diapiric extrusion by Hercyinian orogeny. Cause it rises up from the inside like the granite batholith under Cornwall.

I love this line although, and I am sure there is a clever German word for it, I have not got the foggiest what you are going on about. But even so, it is glorious to read. :)
 
I have trouble in nailing anything in writing. What I commit to writing today I might express differently further down the line. All writing is a work in progress and if it's published, it's been arrested in snapshot. Pickled in progress. For inspiration I might pray to the spirit of diapiric extrusion by Hercyinian orogeny. Cause it rises up from the inside like the granite batholith under Cornwall.

Eek! I'd better slather my tectonic plate in KY jelly, to avoid chafing issues! o_O
 
The Muse, anyone? When I'm stuck I sleep on it, and from time to time I wake up to find the dreaming Unconscious has come up with new ideas or solutions.
 
Praying for something sort of makes it sound as though inspiration is given on merit or pleasing some external power when I suspect it's much more likely everything is woven into everything else.
 
I love this line although, and I am sure there is a clever German word for it, I have not got the foggiest what you are going on about. But even so, it is glorious to read. :)


We did at my comp skoool about the creation of Dartmoor, Exmoor....Cornwall basically. The tors are outcrops of an absolutely ginormous extruded batholith of granite. It bubbled up underground all molten, then was pushed out, and cooled, then got eroded. And we were told it was extruded during the Hercynian orogeny. And now it's got ponies all over it...and our very own @Paul Whybrow of course.


Hercynian orogeny is a geologic mountain-building event caused by Late Paleozoic continental collision between Euramerica (Laurussia) and Gondwana to form the supercontinent of Pangaea.
 
How you inspire me, @Katie-Ellen Hazeldine! I'm definitely evolved from a fraction of the magma-crusted fission pushing up from the ancient supercontinent of Gondwanaland. Reconstituted with fruitcake, trifle, ice cream and the odd surfeited Muse.
 
Oooh, trifle! We never had that, did we lass, when we were being something else way back in Gondwanaland. I wonder if we would have wanted it, had it been available? The Muse was surely there though, the Arch-Muse, singing the Universe.
 
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