One Solitary Fantasy

WRITING ASSIGNMENT:


♥    A stimulus to do creative work: something that stimulates the human mind to creative thought or to the making of art
♥    A thing that inspires: someone or something that inspires somebody
♥    Creativeness: the quality of being stimulated to creative thought or activity, or the manifestation of this
♥    A good idea: a sudden brilliant idea

Write a short essay (250 - 500 words) describing your understanding of each of these aspects of inspiration, and how they influence and enhance an author's work.  Site examples, with referenced footnotes, from the works of at least two of your favorite authors.

                   


I find inspiration most enterprising and rewarding. Like a trustworthy companion who never lets you down. Every writer can instantly recall the dry moments when he just had to write and this loyal friend came to his rescue in a rush of compelling stimulus.

Of course, waiting for inspiration is discouraged. If inspiration finds us at our work it crowns it with unspeakable beauty. Its activity inside a writer compares to fire and fuel. It doesn't spark a flame, but it does know how to elicit an incineration from the tiniest flicker by stimulating a 'flicking' writer on to the making of art. Art interpreted as the creation of a work of novelty that captivates readers through the vigor and sheer beauty of words.

Wole Soyinka, Nigerian playwright and activist suffered castration from social life for close to twenty-eight months for alleged collusion with the separatist faction, 'Biafra' during the Nigerian Civil War. In his words,

'I was placed in solitary confinement for a year and ten months out of the period in which I stayed in prison, which was just over two years. . . I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing. . . '1

Rather than yield to despair his circumstances became a potent source of inspiration, birthing two published poetry collections - 'Poems From Prisons' (1969) and 'The Man Died: Prison Notes' (1972)2.
         Soyinka is but one among millions of writers who have been flung up into the fertile womb of creativity and unearthed inspiration under a rubble of misery.

If inspired, 'one solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.' (Maya Angelo)
'The Red Dragon and The Woman Clothed With the Sun', a portrait credited to William Blake was the subject of a novel by Thomas Harris. The book,  'Red Dragon'3 has a most engaging plot. It's quite amazing that a portrait could incite such genius. Such literary innovations blaze trails, they get a young writer like me fired up. Spur me to run my imagination wild and make me believe anything is possible. I can hardly think of inspiration as 'a thing that inspires' without Thomas Gray's 'Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard'4 coming to mind. Captivated by the sheer simplicity of his surroundings, he created a masterpiece that continues to baffle men of all races and generation. He saw beauty in a 'dead place' like siphoning immortality into mortality. Personally, I've created a few blog posts triggered by words of favorite authors, their words are channels of inspiration to me.

Inspiration is a quality, 'a state of being' reproduced in creativeness. 'A quality of being stimulated to creative activity or the manifestation of this.' It's no wonder 'poetic' writings are called inspired works. They exude an atmosphere where talent is cultivated. I like to think of it as inspiration creating an habitat for itself in a craft it encourages.

On the other hand I don't recollect a single occasion I was inspired and didn't sense an aura of inspiration cuddling my form, caressing sensitive spots to respond to intuition. The experience is mere magic like being lifted out of this sphere into something sweet and. . . out of this world. I can't compare stuff that just popped out of the blues, forced and born of desperation to my inspired writings. It's like being under the influence. There is always a discernible quality in any inspired art that cannot be duplicated. Inspiration is it's own quality.

Last semester, in this class and on this same lesson, Ms. Katz talked about 'Choosing Your Genre'. At the time I was struggling to find what I wanted to be a 'writer of'. I have in possession novels by various authors falling under a wide-range of genres. They're all good books, most of them inspiring yet they couldn't help me choose a genre. By a twist of fate however, I stumbled upon an ancient civilization that existed in my country dated before this era, sometime around 2 BC. It was so advanced it had discovered the use of iron!

You could hear the idea go pop in my head. This is it! I knew a little about the Nok culture before that unmistakable second of epiphany but it barely passed as a subject of interest. One reason, I believe, it made sense when it did is Ms. Katz statement that 'choosing your genre' will influence 'the types of inspiration that are most valuable to you, and colors how you see and process those experiences'.

From that moment on I knew I had to have a pet genre. It started as a sudden, brilliant idea and boomed into full-fledged addiction. From 'Nok' I've indulged in heavy research of ancient African civilizations its helped to make a confident decision founded on a bed of concrete information. I intend to explore ancient African civilizations and hopefully create believable characters in 'historical fiction', as offshoot of plot ideas I derive from the researches.

'Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration', says Thomas Edison. I found this statement to be true. In my choice of genre (historical fiction) a lot of research is involved. It's tough work! But I also found that 1% inspiration will always beat mere 99% perspiration without it. Inspiration is the fire that ignites a writer's experience and refines it into plain genius.

Footnotes
1  http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/wole_soyinka
2  http://www.amazon.com/Man-Died-Prison-Notes-Soyinka/dp/0374521271
3  http://www.amazon.com/Red-Dragon-Thomas-Harris/dp/0525945563
4  http://www.enotes.com/elegy-written