We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to…

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.– Frank Tibolt

This quote reminds me of a line from the movie Music and Lyrics. The basic plot of the movie is that Alex Fletcher (Hugh Grant) needs a song-writer to write the lyrics for a song. He then meets (Drew Barrymore) who starts writing short lines and he is impressed; however, she can’t keep up with demands to add lines and paragraphs on short notice. It is at this point when Alex says “Inspiration is for amateurs”.

The movie goes on to show Sophie completing the song within the deadline and quite successfully at that. The point is that inspiration is not just important but integral to any work you do. I agree well enough on that. Any creative work needs inspiration without which it will end up being forced or redundant. The problem is when we always depend on external source for inspiration and then hold the task at hand hostage.

I have written about this in another post earlier; however, from a different direction. There, I talk about beginning any task you can do or dream about. We see that just dreaming about doing something isn’t going to get you anywhere. You have to begin it. Similarly, inspiration does not do anything in itself. Action does.

This year, lets hope that we break from the habit of waiting to start and get into habit of starting. I have been doing this with some success since and before I started this Quotation Tuesday section. I hope I get better at this with many more projects to come.


Posted

in

by

Comments

2 responses to “We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to…”

  1. Husain Bengali Avatar
    Husain Bengali

    Nice. This is entirely correct and applies to me totally! I always put off starting something for lack of understanding on how to go about it. But when I do start, things always work out.

    1.  Avatar
      Anonymous

      Doesn’t this remind you of starting The Lord of the Rings?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *