You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

--Jack London

I always thought that was a really funny quote. And so Jack London! So macho! But it's like a zen koan--it suddenly reveals its wisdom to me after making me laugh or smile or smirk for years. Yeah. Go after it. Don't be passive. Hunt it down, don't be waiting for "the muse" to come whispering or for the right book to open of the angels to fly by. It's like believing the impossible (I can make it as a writer even if nobody will buy my books!). You have to actually do something. This quote reminds me that, if you're a writer (a lover, a mother, a painter, a guitarist, a police officer, a Karateka, a God-fearing woman or man, a gardener) then what you do is write. What you see is writing. What you eat is writing. What you plant is writing. Writing is an act, it's true. But it's a state of being. Is it a state of grace? It is a state of hunger. So hunt. That's what I get from it all, ol' Jack's little joke for this day.

# posted by Luis @ 9:32 AM