1.3 Whole Inspiration
Does inspiration provide complete sentences, paragraphs, or manuscripts?
Many writers believe writing requires us to compose complete sentences. Ernest Hemingway defeated writer’s block by telling himself “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know” (Hemmingway, 1964, p. 12). Natalie Goldberg notes “We think in sentences, and the way we think is the way we see” (Goldberg, 2016, p. 62). Many notetaking methods also encourage writing full sentences (Ahrens, 2022; Howard & Barton, 1986).
Writers who accept the myth of inspiration also think inspiration provides complete sentences – and possibly more. A famous example comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s account of writing his 1816 poem Kubla Khan (Lowes, 1927). Staying at a lonely farmhouse, ill, and after taking opium, Coleridge fell into a profound sleep in his chair while reading. While asleep, inspiration provided Coleridge with two or three hundred lines of poetry. “All the images rose up before [me] as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort” (Lowes, 1927, p. 370). Awaking from his sleep, Coleridge experienced “a distinct recollection of the whole” and started to transcribe his inspiration onto paper. The poem consists of only 54 lines, and not 300, because a visitor interrupted Coleridge during his transcribing. Coleridge’s inspiration “had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast” (Lowes, 1927, p. 370) when the poet returned to writing his ideas down.
You can easily find many other examples of writers thinking inspiration provides complete sentences. Stephen Koch’s students “believed that real writers – the happy few – concocted stories through some magic process denied to lesser mortals like themselves. Stories came to ‘real writers’ – that mystery elite – complete, perfect, and intricate from the moment of inspiration onward” (Koch, 2003, p. 57).
Anne Lamott offers a similar account: “I sit down in the morning and reread the work I did the day before. And then I wool-gather, staring at the blank page or off into space. I imagine my characters and let myself daydream about them. A movie begins to play in my head, a motion pulsing underneath it, and I stare at it in a trancelike state, until words bounce around together form a sentence. Then I do the menial work of getting it down on paper, because I’m the designated typist” (Lamott, 1995, p. 54).
Dorothea Brande calls inspiration “releasing genius” (Brande, 1934). She describes an author who reports “after mulling an idea over till his head aches he comes to a kind of dead end; he can no longer think about his story or even understand why it once appealed to him” (Brande, 1934, p. 158). But then inspiration strikes, releasing genius: “Much later, when he is least expecting it, the idea returns, mysteriously rounded and completed, ready for transcribing.” For Brande, releasing genius produces complete sentences.
Unfortunately, if writing requires inspiration, and inspiration delivers complete sentences, then you cannot learn how to write (Salesses, 2021). If writing requires inspiration, then writers are born, not made. Fortunately, inspiration may take different forms; some do not produce complete sentences. Alternative ideas about inspiration lead to writing practices which you can learn.
