Goodreads asked Nancy Freund:

How do you get inspired to write?

Nancy Freund This is such a funny question. It implies that we must somehow trick ourselves into being inspired. I have a visual image of a muse flitting around a magical forest of Creative Writing while I chase her. That aint it. A writer is inspired to write ALL the time, and because we are so often NOT writing, that leads to angst, frustration, depression, malaise, bad writing, lots of editing, and sometimes success. But we always have a low-simmering inspiration, I think. We are not chasing it. What we ALSO have -- and what should really be the question here -- is what do you NEED to write? I write when I have a need, especially when coupled with an urgency. Sometimes I am deeply alone, feeling like my thoughts on a thing are isolated only to me. I need to write that to feel less alone or even to understand what exactly I'm thinking. Sometimes I am bothered or saddened or frustrated or disgusted by a thing -- oh my, American politics, European refugee crisis, the global tragedies of wounds to our environment -- and I need to write about those things. Inspiration isn't the right word at all. It's more like desperation. Publication is an entirely different thing. Luckily for the readers of the world, most of this writing will never see the light of day. But it's what drives my writing and my ongoing interest in writing forward. Then I suppose what makes it to publication is the inspired vetting of the many pages of writing that are produced out of need. So there's the correct use of the word "inspire." I guess the bottom line is it all comes from angst.

flag