It’s exactly a year ago since I started writing this weekly blog, and I have to admit I’ve enjoyed doing so far more than I anticipated. And I love getting your responses – emails, phonecalls, blog comments, snail mail, carrier pigeon – so please keep them coming. It’s so encouraging to know real live human neurones are relating to the issues I chatter on about.
A number of kind souls have asked where I get my inspiration. Hmm. Inspiration. It got me thinking. I guess they mean the supposed creative force or influence on poets, artists, musicians etc stimulating the production of works of art. Easy answer: anywhere and everywhere. From life itself. But inspiration can also apply to that elusive sudden brilliant, creative or timely idea. Answer: who knows?
I guess we’re all familiar with the Thomas Edison quote: Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Even the best of us (count me out) can wait a jolly long time for that whisper of brilliance to come whistling through the wind – if it ever does. And given the essential solitude of the writer, in my chosen profession there can be yards and yards of unseen hard graft and obsessive attention to detail, or even apparent indolence, for every split-hair’s width of magical thought. An unsung price. The prizes tend to go to the inspired not the perspiring.
I’m currently waiting for something resembling inspiration to zoom out of the ether for the book I’m writing on organ transplantation. I’ve had lots of ideas, done a fair bit of research, and written over 28,000 words so far, but it’s definitely lacking something – that vital spark that converts the humdrum into something more scintillating. It’s … well, pedestrian. Fair’s fair; I haven’t been exactly receptive to literary flashes recently as regular visitors will know.
But I can’t sit all day chewing a pencil. It’s bad for my aging teeth. So I’ve been ploughing on with reading – everything from the latest scandal about organs being taken without consent because of a ‘mix-up’ (that has to be up there with the top ten euphemisms-of-the-year) in the transfer of data between the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and the organ registry … through assorted books about ethical issues … to the latest edition of that amazing publication, The Reader. And gradually, gradually, gradually I find myself settling back into my accustomed place at the writing desk again, rather like a roosting hen. The little grey cells are starting to focus once more and the imagination and mind are being reactivated. Hope returns.
But while I’m on the subject of inspiration, I must tell you about a ‘brilliant, creative idea’ of another kind which I was recently stunned by, in a completely different area of my life. A friend of mine has Alzheimer’s and mobility problems, and her son suddenly thought of a way of taking her to visit old haunts that was all within her tolerances: he used Google Earth. She could sit in comfort and wander through familiar streets for as long as her concentration lasted. Now that’s what I call inspirational.
Oh, and spring – it’s certainly sprung in our garden – and who could fail to be moved by this kind of beauty after the winter we’ve just had.
Flashes of brilliance in any walk of life, not just the artistic, can buoy us up and urge us on to better things. Me? I’m heading back to inspirational stories about people donating or receiving organs …
Tags: organ transplantation, The Reader