Wise words from Nick Cave: "Inspiration is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything. I go into my office every day that I'm in Brighton and work. Whether I feel like it or not is irrelevant." Inspiration is nice, but if you only work when it strikes, you're going to be an unhappy artist. This is especially true if you want to earn a living at it; you don't hear about surgeons getting "surgeon's block" or garbage men getting "garbage men's block." There are assuredly days when the surgeon doesn't want to be removing gall-bladders, but she does it anyway, because that's her job. (via Kadrey)

  • http://www.CoryEvanWright.com/ Cory Wright

    Sigh. I hate reality checks.

  • Jaye Sunsurn

    Interesting wasn’t it also Nick Cave that once said upon the desire to nominate him for an honour that he couldn’t compete due to his fear that his Muse would BOLT, and he would be left bereft and unable to create?

  • http://twitter.com/a_w_young a_w_young

    Reminds me of Reggie Watts’ speaking about “innovation”
    (I forget what moment it comes in, but it’s in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABm7DuBwJd8)

  • http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

    I think I would have less writing block if I could just overcome my dayjob block.

    • Chuck

       Ah — very close to my thoughts.  The past couple months I was going to write in the evenings has suddenly been socked up by certification training block.

  • paulj

    This is consistent with how just about any successful creative person approaches their work, and it differentiates professionals from amateurs. Professional writers often set goals of n number of pages per day, artists spend x hours in the studio, etc. If you wait for the muse to show up, you could be waiting a very long time.

  • ToMajorTom

    I’m not sure emptying garbage cans and formulating a story or painting are comparable.  I suppose if you’re written the same story 100s of times before or all you do is recreate the same painting over and over again…those would be comparable.  But I don’t think being inspired to write or paint is the same as being inspired to lift a garbage can.

  • http://profiles.google.com/gherghetta Robin Gherghetta

    There are a lot of myths about creativity.

  • Ipo

    Because there isn’t enough uninspired art yet.  

    • Antinous / Moderator

      You can’t refine your craft if you don’t actually practice it.  Or as Jane Austen said, “Success supposes endeavour.”

  • Susanna King

    I suppose it’s all in how you look at it. If art were my job, then I’d have a valid reason to do it even if inspiration hadn’t struck. As it is, I have to use inspiration as an excuse to spend time creating things instead of washing dishes, cleaning the cat box, etc. in my free time. “Wait, give me a minute, I have to write this song down before I forget it!”

    • bcsizemo

      I kind of agree.  The examples given, doctors or garbage men, have a routine to do.  They go into work and have a list of basically what’s going to happen that day.  In reality most jobs are like that.  Obviously with more artistic jobs things become more open, but working on your craft is part of any job.  Be it doctor, retail sales flunky, or artist – there is always room for improvement.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1428313809 Dustin Driver

    Words to live by.

  • jsd

    Great post. I really needed this. 

    Ah fuck…

  • ZikZak

    The problem is that when it comes to art, people don’t value “getting the job done” the way that they do with a surgeon or a garbageman. 

    If the surgeon gets out our gall bladder and didn’t break anything else, we’re not particularly interested in whether it was exciting or unique or provocative.  Because of this, it’s a task that can be performed by rote, again and again in exactly the same way.  It doesn’t matter if it’s boring…in fact, we want it to be boring.  A lot of our jobs and our economy in general is devoted to making our lives as boring as possible.

    And that’s why we like art: we like to be surprised and excited, challenged and provoked.  Now it’s definitely true that creating good art requires tons of work, and that most of that work is boring and rote, just like being a garbageman.  And I would also contest that there are many, many people who are inspired enough to create great art, they just have something else holding them back.  So it’s not like inspiration is some ultra-rare precious quality that only the Great Minds can touch.

    But inspiration is critical – art cannot happen without it.  It’s possible to take out people’s trash day after day in zombie-mode without a hint of inspiration, and everyone will appreciate it, because you got the job done.  But if you make art that way, they will not.

    • dr15

      The thing is that you’re assuming that inspiration just strikes like a magical thing. It usually doesn’t. 

      You sit and you work your ass off, sometimes for hours and hours, changing stuff, rearranging stuff, questioning your first premise, until you make something good. Or you don’t, and you throw it away and start over, but even this is essential and you learn from it.

      If people were just creating when inspiration strikes they would invest much less time in their creative endeavors which would lower the quality of their art. To hone a skill takes time (10,000 hours they say) and creativity isn’t the exception.

      So yes, you do have to go to the office every day like a surgeon and cut stuff open and make stuff work. Luckily your success rate doesn’t have a direct effect on peoples lives. Anyone in a creative field will tell you the percent of stuff you throw away is huge.

      That’s why bands usually don’t have a new album every year, and neither do authors have a new book.

      Nothing is stopping anyone from creating great art but the willingness to sit on your ass and work.

  • Uhclem

    Tom Robbins wrote:

    “Waiting for the right time, the right situation, or the right inspiration, well, that’s for amateurs. If you’re professional, or want to be, you write every day. I arrive in my writing room at ten every weekday morning. That way, my muse always knows where and when to find me. She doesn’t have to go looking for me in the bars or on the beach or along the boulevards. She doesn’t always show up, true enough, but she knows where I’ll be, and that way I don’t miss any opportunities.”

    • nathanroberts

      But without inspiration, what do you write? How do you write when you have nothing to say?

      • Antinous / Moderator

        You don’t.  You’re not a writer if you have nothing to say.  Writing has become yet another one of those careers that people want so that they can have fame and fortune, but have no real interest in the work itself.

  • http://twitter.com/NoahLampert NoahLampert

    Truth

  • rocketpjs

    The same applies for the really fun stuff.  If you want amazing days on the ski slopes you have to go every chance you get, and some of them will be incredible while others will suck.  Ditto almost anything worth doing.

  • http://leanderwattig.de/ Leander Wattig

    True.

  • feetleet

    If you’re an artist, and you’re working in a less than inspired state, just call it what it is: “practice.” I can only see two reasons why someone who is not presently on a meme crest would sell his practice: 1) he is narcissistically certain that people will make pilgrimages to his first studio apartment to ogle his glass-encased toothbrush when he dies, or 2) he is broke. If someone disdains art enough to try to monetize it in the first place, broke or not, then I don’t think it’s unfair to tell that person: “art-ing in second gear dilutes your brand and may ultimately make you LESS money/important.”

    Consider Ryan Adams. I’d say he’s prolific to a fault. And I don’t think it’s because diligence belies some manic-savant narrative. There are just too many Ryan Adams data points. Artists, unlike garbage men, can redact their performance reviews. They can hack their transcripts with a bunch of WPs. Everybody poops. Except for artists, who can unpoop. Really, what is the difference between micro-self-curation like white-out or auto-tune, and macro-self-curation like the wastebasket? I feel like Nick Cave is either trying to excuse some self-perceived dumpster diving, or trying to make himself out to be the only artist who practices. And boy does he practice smugly – an office? Inspiration is subjective to the artist, Nick Cave. Personally, I can’t think of anything more uninspired or uninspiring than the clock punching he’s trying to evoke. I don’t always throw a parade when I poop, but when I do, I prefer that the poop cure cancer. What a smug, smug man.

  • http://www.facebook.com/BlessedBlogger Melissa Clancy

    I think he may be confusing motivation with inspiration. In any creative field you can’t just magically conjure up lyrics, stories, designs etc. They have to come to you. And that’s totally different from motivation which is having the drive and energy to work on the concepts that inspired you. If you don’t ‘feel’ like working it’s probably a good idea to attempt to anyway, even if you’re just doodling, because it may lead to inspiration. But if you have the time, energy and motivation to work but nothing inspired to work on then you can’t force it. That’s just the way it is.

    • JimEJim

       Actually, he’s just describing the difference between people that wait for inspiration to come to them vs. people that go out and seek it.  Most people still seem confused about the idea that creativity is a process, not some magical thing that chooses you.

      The ones that seek it out through work are more efficient at finding it than the ones that just sit around complaining about their lack of it.

  • Martijn

    Terry Pratchett once said something like: There is no such thing as Writer’s Block. There’s only bad writers. (I believe it was in response to a question about Robert Jordan, but I’m not sure about that.)

  • Nick Hayday

    My art teacher always used the line that art is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration

  • benher

    I can see why Nick Cave would say something like this – he is extremely adept at his craft and has certainly put in decades worth of time honing it.

    And anyhow, when the emperor-god of Australia speaks; I listen… I bet in the time it took me to type this, he probably cleft a boulder in half with lightening from his fingertips.