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Inspiration

Who inspires you to do what you do? A reporter asked me that question this morning in regards to writing. I was stumped at first. There are so many authors whose work I admire. How to narrow it down? I even had a little over twenty four hours to mull it over, but I still fumbled around when it came time to answer. I finally got it narrowed down to four: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis for their creativity, Elizabeth George for suspense, and Astrid Lindgren (of Pippi Longstocking fame) for plain old silliness.

I'd never thought much about who/what inspires me. Have you? Without inspiration, would we still be reading our books by candlelight or traveling across the U.S. in covered wagons? What inspires me will likely do nothing for you and what inspires you is probably meaningless to me. What is it inside of us that connects to an external who or what and gives us that jolt, that motivation, that passion to go further, to reach higher, to persevere? I don't know the answer to that, but I have a funny feeling that it has something to do with God.

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  1. AnonymousApril 25, 2009 at 11:17 AM

    i wrote this poem last week and after reading your post i thought you might like to read it. also, can i read some of your upcoming publishings?

    The Literary Circle

    There is nothing greater than a poet
    taking time to pry through a novel
    or short story, thanking the author
    with calloused thumbs and dry eyes.
    Nothing greater than the journalist
    eating and dissecting the line
    breaks and assonance
    of a poet’s first manuscript.
    When I drive at night reciting
    lines of Steinbeck and Rand
    to myself, I can hear them
    talking back in little haikus,
    couplets from Collins or Strand
    (if they were alive to know them),
    who in turn sit at their typewriters
    and punch out the numbers of Dewey
    and Debs, drinking a pint to their
    fight for freedom of the mind.
    We’re all whistling the names
    of those whose words and lives
    and deaths keep us going.
    Some of us just have a pencil
    in our teeth, waiting for someone
    to turn on the bathwater.

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