Inspiration or Perspiration

Here’s a picture of our gazebo after a recent snowstorm in the Northeast where I live. The snow has since melted because of a few warm and rainy days, but I hope it will look like that again soon.

Winter is a great season for an author (or an avid reader, for that matter). It’s a time to hunker down in bad weather and concentrate on the tasks we love most.

Writing is one of the pursuits I love the most. But it’s not always easy. The words don’t always appear magically on the page.

I recently heard a fellow fiction writer quote Thomas Edison. The message can apply to writers and non-writers alike.

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” -Thomas A. Edison

Hearing it again reminded me that its meaning is so true when creating a novel. My writing life consists mainly of hard work. Inspiration is essential to my process—some may call it creativity. But I spend most of my time on the millions of fundamental details of writing, such as reworking a sentence over and over again until it conveys the exact emotion and is as precise as I can make it.

For those of you who heard me discuss my past, you know I wanted to become a fiction writer for many years. Back then, I thought that writing would be the opposite of this formula. I pictured myself mostly thinking about a fictional world, and the story would flow onto the page. My idea back then was that having a great idea would be enough. That’s all it would take before the manuscript was ready for publication.

The reality of writing is much closer to that of Thomas Edison’s quote. I don’t believe any author is successful without saying no to many of the distractions that can pull us away from our writing. As a result, we have to make hundreds of small choices in favor of our craft.

The perspiration part of that equation is something that I need to remember even after years of writing fiction full-time.