Stuff and Things

“ I believe in inspiration, but I also believe that inspiration only comes after the work is done. Think of it: to inspire means, literally, to inhale, to draw air into the lungs. Now, you can sit there in the chair and wait for inspiration to come, and sure enough, all those little mechanisms will move to involuntarily pull oxygen to your blood. But that passive mode of reception doesn’t generally work for me. I first need to get up and move around; I need to work, to make the lungs work harder, bringing in the great gulps of sky needed to get through a poem. So inspiration? The muse comes to me, but only after I’ve earned her. ”