• Julius Topohozin

There is no writing without inspiration and perspiration. Inspiration and perspiration are like the pillars holding the building of any work of art together. These two elements of writing go hand in glove. Inspiration comes before perspiration. As a writer, before you put pen to paper, you must first be inspired. Thereafter, you work on the inspiration to bring it to a masterpiece. It is at this point that perspiration comes in. If this process is not followed, what you have will be similar to a blank paper.

Since inspiration and perspiration are essential to writing, it is important to understand what these concepts are.

Inspiration, according to Google, is the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative. When you receive a creative spark in your mind to bring something to birth, that is an inspiration. Inspiration for a writer is like a sudden burst of creative energy that enables him or her to turn a blank page into words, words into beautiful sentences which eventually become a masterpiece.

Getting inspiration is the first step in the writing process. The next step after this is perspiration.

Perspiration is described as the action or process of perspiring; a saline fluid secreted by the sweat glands.

When we look at perspiration in connection to writing, it is the grit that follows inspiration. This is the time when a writer works continuously to craft a compelling creative work after getting inspired. To perspire in writing is to draw out a storyline, develop character writing, arrange words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into chapters, and chapters into a book.
Take perspiration as the work a carver does on a log of wood. The carver has a mental image of the masterpiece in his mind. But until he uses his chisel, and hammer to chop off bits of unwanted wood, he will never get his desired masterpiece. Until you work on your inspiration, you will not turn out a creative work. Perspiration is important to writing because without it, inspiration will just be latent, inactive and dormant.

Thomas Edison once said: “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. This is to tell you how perspiration is pivotal to creativity. While giving an interview about her book, (Harry Potter), J.K. Rowlings said she was on a train going home when the inspiration for the story popped up in her head.

According to her:

“I finished writing the final Harry Potter book in 2007, which seems a very long time ago now. And before that, I had been immersed in Harry’s world for nearly 20 years – since 1990, in fact, when the idea of a boy who doesn’t yet know that he is a great wizard first bubbled up in my brain. But what makes me happiest is that new readers, all over the world, are still discovering Harry Potter for the first time, today.”

Imagine the length of time it took to have that little burst of inspiration reach publication? That is why a creative work must go through rigorous transformations till it becomes a masterpiece. It is like refining a mineral that eventually turns to gold. In this process, dross and dirt are taken away. Sometimes, whole sentences, paragraphs or even chapters are taken out. Imagine the number of revisions J.K Rawlings did on Harry Potter before it was published. It is on record that several publishing houses rejected her manuscript. Undeterred, she kept working continuously on it. Eventually, the publishing house that finally published her manuscript told her never to consider writing as a profession. Today, however, that advice holds no water because J K Rawlings has gone on to become a billionaire through her books.

How Does Inspiration Come?

There is no strict method through which inspiration comes. It can come to you anywhere and at any time. It can come through a word you heard, a sentence uttered. An event or even an image you saw. Inspiration for creative work can even come through dreams. What is important as a creative writer is to have on your pen and paper or anything device that can record your thoughts when inspiration comes calling.

Have you got any inspiration for a creative work? Don’t sleep on the idea. Work on it till it becomes a masterpiece.

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