Every time I hear: “Where do you get your inspiration?”- my mind naturally searches for the right answer: From my life, from my family, from the movies I’ve seen, from nature, from the library, from the internet, from other writers. These are good, logical answers when interviewed by reporters, but how many times have I actually been ‘inspired to write’ before?

 

Really, how many of us live lives of grand themes, have awe-inspiring friends and families, encounter sublime, moving situations daily, had extraordinary childhoods that are able to inspire us into producing elevated writings? No, I for one had a rather forgettable childhood and live in a boring apartment. As I look out of the window now, there aren’t any grand castles and magical forests. All I see are some every ordinary people encountering happiness in a swimming pool.

 

Many people like to think writers get their source of inspiration from themselves. The truth is closer to the contrary. I’ve never been on big adventures to write about them, I’ve never been kidnapped or been tortured as a prisoner of war, or come face to face with my destiny, or get embroiled in some top government scandal. I suspect many writers have not too. But they can certainly write about them. Maybe that’s what writers are for: to write about extraordinary things that neither he nor his reader have experienced before.

 

So the myth of the writer in black turtle neck, cigarette in his mouth, holding a pen on one hand and a cup of coffee on the other, is more myth than real. Writing is really 99% perspiration. You sit down and you write. There won’t be any light bulbs flicking above your head for sure.

 

My first literature teacher said this on the first day of class: “Writers don’t write. They craft.” It’s true. You write with your heart, then rewrite with your head. You take away and you put some. You change the tense, replace a comma, add a full stop, consult the thesaurus, restructure the word order, replace words, look up the dictionary, erase a sentence- heck, even erase a whole paragraph, reread, rewrite, amend the flow, change the title, change the ending, count words, check spelling errors, sip coffee, change US English to UK English, steal from other writers, copy, google, reread, put away, rewrite again, tear your hair, light a cigarette, rewrite again.

 

In short, you craft your piece like a sculptor crafts his art- sentence by sentence, word by word, letter by letter. I don’t think Shakespeare’s perfect metres or Lawrence’s legendary imageries or Emerson’s transcendentalist prose are first drafts. The greatest writings have gone through many great rewrites.

 

Writing is tedious. To get it right the first time is rare. To get it right through inspiration is even rarer.