When it Comes to Inspiration, is Ignorance Bliss?

Goethe proclaimed, “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.” Translated into the vernacular, his advice is simple and straightforward, “If you want to do something, just get on and do it!”

Sound advice, I'm sure you'll agree, but it doesn't always cut the mustard when I'm trying to come up with new, creative ideas. Perhaps geniuses like Goethe are rarely, if ever, short of inspiration, but inspiration doesn't seem to visit us lesser mortals with such regularity. Too often we find ourselves waiting for it to come, and like the proverbial bus, it might not turn up for ages and then three ideas pop out of the blue at the same time.

If it were simply a matter of sitting down and doing it, we would, wouldn't we? But instead, like the writer in a poignant Claire Bretecher cartoon strip, we do everything but... We do the vacuuming, the washing, go to the loo, have a smoke, grab a snack, do the washing up and make ourselves a coffee – not an instant one either but a labour-intensive fresh one!

But what exactly are we waiting for? Traditionally, inspiration has been seen as a gift bestowed upon us by the gods. It arrives unannounced, possesses us briefly and then departs as mysteriously as it appeared. When we are inspired it's as if a transcendent power has literally ‘breathed upon’ us. We seem to have no control over when it comes; like a becalmed schooner adrift in the middle of a vast ocean, we just have to wait patiently until the wind of inspiration deigns to get us moving again.

Inspiration's fickleness is bad news for professional creatives like me. With urgent deadlines gathering like storm clouds, I have to find a way of turning on the tap of inspiration when I need to, rather than waste time waiting for it to spontaneously turn itself on.

You'll notice that the tap metaphor implies more control than the wind one, and it also suggest the possibility of a more active role for me than just waiting passively for something to happen. So let's take our plumbing metaphor a little further.

If the tap on your bathroom sink stopped working, or only worked intermittently, what would you do? Would you stand around staring at it with your fingers crossed? Would you encourage it to flow by making yourself dirty? Of course you wouldn't. You'd call in a plumber and expect him, or her, to have a rational response to your problem tap based on a sound knowledge of how taps work and experience of fixing them.

Some professional creatives resist the idea of applying this kind of rational analytic approach to their process. I know plenty of artists who fear that if they knew more about how they do what they do, they might end up not being able to do it anymore. For them, inspiration is an exotic, subterranean bloom that withers if exposed to the light of day.

But, in my experience, what's good for the plumber can also be good for the professional creative. It is possible to discover how to fix the tap of inspiration by learning more about the techniques and processes involved in creativity, and by doing so we end up gaining a practical insight into how it works and the conditions that help it along.

When I started out as a self-taught professional cartoonist, I thought my biggest challenge was going to be learning to draw properly. Over time I learned that the crucial difference between good and not-so-good cartoonists boiled down to the quality of their thinking and ideas, not the standard of their draughtsmanship.

In my early days as a cartoonist I found myself at the mercy of inspiration, which meant I had some good, productive days and far too many bad, considerably less productive days. As my interest in making my process conscious grew, the number of good, productive days in my studio gradually increased. It seemed that understanding more about how cartoonists think enabled me to have more control over my own creative efforts – not only that, I started producing better cartoons.

There's plenty of evidence from outside the arts that knowledge about how you do what you is crucial for professional success. For example, in professional sports, managers and players who know about performance psychology, diet, physiology and the physical technique of their chosen discipline have a distinct competitive edge over their rivals.

At some point in every professional's life, the wheels come off the cart. If you have no insight into your process when this happens, you find yourself grinding to a halt. If, on the other hand, you have an understanding of how you do what you do, you find yourself in the fortunate position of being able to put the wheels back on and get things rolling again. Goethe's advice is very encouraging, but for those of us who wonder how to start, an understanding of our own process makes it possible to be bold and “begin it now.”

© 2006 Martin Shovel CreativityWorks

© 2006 CreativityWorks. All rights reserved. You are free to use material from the this newsletter so long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify us where the material will appear. The attribution should read:

"By Martin Shovel of CreativityWorks. Please visit CreativityWorks website at www.creativityworks.net to find out more about advanced presentation skills courses and coaching." (Please ensure that the link is live if placed in an eZine or on a website.)