Do you think it is more important to find inspiration or to get to work and write?

Nick Cave · 29 Jun 2021

Others here said this too

Making art is a job you turn up to whether or not you feel inspired, and the work only arrives for people who are already at the desk.

Their wordsI also have an affinity with artists who treat their craft as a job and are not dependent on the vagaries of inspiration — because I am one of them. Like most people with a job, we just go to work.

Also said by Steven Pressfield, George Saunders

Read the piece on theredhandfiles.com ↗

2 korrents from this piece ↓

Nick Cave did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Making art is a job you turn up to whether or not you feel inspired, and the work only arrives for people who are already at the desk.

Their wordsI also have an affinity with artists who treat their craft as a job and are not dependent on the vagaries of inspiration — because I am one of them. Like most people with a job, we just go to work.
Our reading
A maker cannot summon the good line, only be at the desk when it arrives, and the outcome is not theirs to influence.

Their wordsPen poised, I sit to attention, in my suit, on the edge of my imagination, prepared for the beautiful line to arrive. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not — either way I am powerless to influence the outcome.

Keep reading

The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.