Sunday Snippet: Leonard Bernstein

“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time…The wait is simply too long.”

If you are writing largely for pleasure and personal expression, that’s one thing. If you are relying on your professional writing skills to provide a stable income, that’s another thing altogether.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with blogging as a hobby. Feel free to write whatever you want because you want to write whatever you want. Feel free to approach the keyboard only when divine inspiration happens to smack you in the face, spurring you on to collect those disparate thoughts into coherent paragraphs. However, for a professional freelance writer like me, such an approach is not sustainable and it is not a luxury that can be easily enjoyed.

If I were to wait around for inspiration to arrive on its own, I would effectively be sabotaging my own chances at success. It’s great when I can sit down first thing in the morning, feeling an unbridled enthusiasm to let the words pour out from my fingers. It’s great when I know exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it. Unfortunately, this happens much less often that I would like.

Leonard Bernstein, above, is perhaps best known as a conductor with the New York Philharmonic. He’s also an accomplished composer, pianist, and author. The quote that he provides above may seem like it is centered around the business of writing, but it can also apply to any endeavor you may have in your life, creative or otherwise.

We simply do not have the time to wait for good things to happen. At some point, you have to stop wishing and start doing. You have to make good things happen for you. Inspiration is great, but don’t come to rely on it.