|
Today's
Quotation:
The great composer does not set to work
because he
or she is inspired, but becomes inspired because he or
she is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart
settled
down day after day to the job in hand with as much
regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his
or her figures. They didn't waste time waiting for an
inspiration.
Ernest
Newman
|
|
Today's
Meditation:
Somehow
people have gotten us to believe that inspiration is
something that "hits us," that it's some sort of
divine touch from heaven or somewhere else that causes us to
be creative. And because so many of us believe this,
millions of us never really create anything, but we spend
our time waiting around for something that will cause us to
create, rather than just getting to it and working at it.
I've
written four novels, and believe me, they didn't just come
to me. The basic ideas were there in my head, but the
actual words themselves came when I spent two or three hours
a day locked up in a small room with just my computer and a
stereo. Each novel took several months to write at
that rate, and that doesn't include the rewriting and
revisions. I had to make a commitment to working on
them, and then I had to spend the time necessary to do so,
sacrificing many other things in order to finish them.
The
best things seem to look the easiest--the best paintings,
writings, athletic performances, or anything else that you
see tend to look effortless. But a good performance on
stage or on the basketball court is good because of the
thousands of hours of practice and rehearsal that have
culminated in this moment.
Yes,
inspiration does come to us, but when it does, we have a
choice to make--are we going to take it for what it is and
work really hard to turn it into something special, or are
we going to let it slide into the back of our minds, never
to see the light of day as the product of a lot of time and
effort?
|
