3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on Finding Inspiration
Kafka’s Writer’s Block, Finding Inspiration & The Control Paradox
I. Kafka’s Writer’s Block
Not even the world’s greatest writers are immune to lacking inspiration and motivation. Here’s a relatable excerpt from Franz Kafka’s diary:
JANUARY 20, 1915: The end of writing. When will it take me up again?
JANUARY 29, 1915: Again tried to write, virtually useless.
JANUARY 30, 1915: The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you.
FEBRUARY 7, 1915: Complete standstill. Unending torments.
MARCH 11, 1915: How time flies; another ten days and I have achieved nothing. It doesn’t come off. A page now and then is successful, but I can’t keep it up, the next day I am powerless.
MARCH 13, 1915: Lack of appetite, fear of getting back late in the evening; but above all the thought that I wrote nothing yesterday, that I keep getting farther and farther from it, and am in danger of losing everything I have laboriously achieved these past six months. Provided proof of this by writing one and a half wretched pages of a new story that I have already decided to discard…. Occasionally I feel an unhappiness that almost dismembers me, and at the same time am convinced of its necessity and of the existence of a goal to which one makes one’s way by undergoing every kind of unhappiness.
—Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1923
II. Finding Inspiration
When inspiration is eventually found, it often happens unexpectedly. Here’s Robert Greene, author of The Daily Laws, describing his writing experience. He relates how ideas seemingly come out of nowhere once we put enough hours into our work:
And suddenly this was happening to me. After all my research and all the preparation, by the time I had reached chapter five, ideas for that chapter were coming to me while I was taking a shower, while I was taking a walk. I was even dreaming about the book and ideas were coming to me in my sleep, confirming what I was writing about. […]
It's almost as if the book or the project is living inside of you.
—Robert Greene, The Daily Laws
On a similar note, check out my post on how to get better at writing in 7+1 steps.
III. The Control Paradox
Any attempts to force inspiration are usually futile, which is a perfect example of the Control Paradox. Philosopher Alan Watts explains:
The principle is that any time you, as it were, voluntarily let up control, in other words cease to cling to yourself, you have an excess of power. Because you’re wasting energy all the time in self-defence. Trying to manage things, trying to force things to conform to your will. The moment you stop doing that, that wasted energy is available. […]
When you’re trying, however, to act as if you were god. That is to say you don’t trust anybody, you are the dictator and you have to keep everybody in line, you lose the divine energy. Because what you’re doing is simply defending yourself. So then the principle is: The more you give it away the more it comes back.
—Alan Watts
🐘
Have a great week,
Chris
themindcollection.com
P.S.: My latest post is all about 10 Storytelling Tropes You Didn’t Know You Knew.