Long ago, in Chico, California, I was with students in a taco shop after a creative writing class I taught at the state university a few blocks away.
A student, a black-haired beauty incongruously named Mord, said, “Writing is so hard, I wonder if it’s worth our time to maybe spend our whole lives writing stories and maybe not make any money with them.
“Why do you do it?” she asked.
“I have this dream,” I said, “that if I write enough stories and work hard enough, one of them will be a masterpiece.”
“Okay, but how will you know it’s a masterpiece?”
“Maybe I won’t,” I said. “But somebody who reads it might tell me it moved them to have a better life, or to see the world more clearly.”
Later, in Tucson, Arizona, Jonathon Penner, a writer and professor, asked, “How do you think we can draw the distinction between art and commercial or hack writing?”
I thought a while and said, “Beats me.” But over the years I’ve discovered a better response.
Art, I’ll contend, isn’t the creation but the process of giving all our powers to make a creation as superb and honest as we can. The creation may become what we call great art, good art, poor art, or lousy art. But art it is, if the creator gave it his or her all.
And our powers aren’t only about innate talent or developed skill, I’m convinced. The power we have, the one that can make our efforts transcend our talent and skill and birth a masterpiece, is the power to get inspired.
