Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Day 23 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

Talk About Inspiration

Inspiration? There's a question I have fielded so many times. Where do you get your inspiration? What inspired you to write that poem? Who was your inspiration for that character? Who inspired you to write?
 
Honestly, inspiration is such a fleeting thing (which is why I carry a notebook and a sketchpad around all the time). It can be a word, or a phrase, or a bit of conversation between myself and someone I know or between total strangers I overhear. It can be an article in a paper, a song on the radio, or a comment on something I see out on the Internet.
 
It might be totally visual and thoroughly non-human, a building, a road, a derelict car or a billion other things. But what it always possesses is that feeling it stirs. It may be sudden and fleeting (thus the notebook and sketchbook) fragile and gone like a soap bubble. It may have the weight of the ages and the ability to hold my attention for years. It is that 'Aha!' moment. Whether or not I make anything of it after that is pretty much dependent on the vagaries of my heart. Whatever happens, this thing has touched me and if I have been paying attention it has altered me, sometimes hardly at all and other times on a grand scale, but it has and because of that I am never the same.
 
I have written about the seemingly unremarkable and attained a moment of eloquence I didn't know was there and I have languished over the really big ideas without any notion of what to do with them. Much of that comes back to my heart and whether I know, really, how I feel about something. If I do then it happens, if I don't I move on. I like what Hemingway said, "I write one page of masterpiece for every ninety-one pages of shit, and I try to make sure the shit goes in the wastebasket."
 
As for any one particular person who has inspired me. I would track that back to a high school English teacher long ago passed from this world. Fran Burbank who never judged, always critiqued with brutal honesty and let me know that writing, in all its forms, was a noble vocation. After that, the world became a palette.
 
Still soliciting comments, critiques, or questions. Followers or subscribers are always welcome. Looking for submissions for the Your Work/Your Love page. short fiction to 1200 words, poetry to 25 lines, and carefully thought out essays. No pay, just exposure. You retain all rights.
 
As always...live,love, write.
 
 
Dane F. Baylis

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