What Inspires Me: Amare and Things That Go Bump in the Night

I’m having a meta moment right now, having gotten up early to sit in a shady spot on the patio to write an answer to this question: What inspires you?

In other words (and this is where the meta comes in), I’m searching for inspiration to write about inspiration. (Whoa!)

I’m ticking down a mental list all the things that inspire me generally: The joy of my children (although as I write this I’m praying they sleep long enough this morning so I can finish this post); the quiet other-world oasis of this backyard garden (although I realize as I sit here now that the rabbits have been nibbling the cucumbers again—must erect fencing); the sharp writing of the weekly New Yorker (although I feel guilty about the unread stack beside my bed).

All of those things are pools of a kind of inspiration, but with a bit of tension rippling the surface of the water, too.

Really what I’m searching for, sitting by the rabbit-nibbled garden on the patio (which also needs sweeping—sigh), is a source for professional inspiration. The kind of inspiration that makes all the difference between a groove and a rut, as the songwriter Christine Lavin sings. (“There’s a very fine line between a groove and a rut; a fine line between eccentrics and people who are just plain nuts.”)

I’m searching for the source of that inspiration that comes like a summer tornado across the landscape, barreling toward you with a velocity and intensity you can’t resist. Only, unlike an actual tornado, you don’t take cover: You stand and face it head-on, because you recognize the irrational glory of the way it knocks you out of an old rut and into a new groove.

Have you ever had that experience? I have. Sometimes, it’s been huge and consuming (like the inspiration for our book, Content Rules), and sometimes it’s smaller (like the inspiration to create a new talk or a new column or a new part of our business.)

But the inspiration, when it rolls in, always feels like it’s a need instead of a want: like something I’m close to panicked to act on—like I must act on. Must act on.

When inspiration comes, I can’t ignore it. Even when I try. (And I have. Because acting on inspiration is a lot of work, and I’m inherently lazy.)

So that’s how inspiration feels, when it strikes. But what’s its source for me? There are two:

1. Being an amateur. I almost wrote, “Being an artist.” But that sounds pretentious, doesn’t it? I think so.

There are times when the photos I take and the things I write might be art. But generally my inspiration comes from a more humble place: The act of creating for its own sake.

Publishing a blog post because I have something I’d like to tell you or sharing a photo or a Vine of something that delights me is purely an amateur pursuit, in the original sense of the word. The root of the word amateur is love (from amare, to love), and therefore someone who does something for love is an amateur.

The very practice of creating and sharing is, ironically, its own muse. It’s not unlike the way that a bodybuilder is driven to go to the gym day after day: It starts as routine, but it becomes, in a way, his religion. Until his conviction defines him, and he doesn’t know who he is without it.

And so it is with amateur creativity: When you create, and the more you create -- amateur or otherwise. I’m intentionally using a bodybuilding analogy here, by the way, because sometimes people think that good writers or good photographers or creative spirits have a natural gift. Talent might be part of it (a bodybuilder with certain genetic advantages will get more buff), but still you need to work the muscles to get results.

Of course, the digital tools and platforms we now have—the content management systems, Instagram, Vine, and so on—put the elegant tools of artists in the hands of amateurs. They put magic wands in the hands of us Muggles. The internet has flattened all barriers to creating. Which thrills (and inspires) me.

2. Fear. I was what my parents called a “nervous child.” I worried constantly. I was afraid of lots of things—snakes, the dark, monsters, our house catching on fire, deep water, loud noises, relatives coming over, being kidnapped, the school bus, Russia, talking to adults, answering the telephone. I was chronically embarrassed.

At night I’d lie in my twin bed watching the shadows on the wall and imagine all sorts of horrors. “Mom!” I’d yell, as suddenly another thought occurred to me. “When was the last earthquake?” From her recliner in the den she’d yell, “Go to sleep!”

As an adult, though, I’ve learned to embrace fear as both motivating and inspiring. These days, if something scares me, my first impulse is no longer to cover my ears and avoid it. I’ve learned that if something scares me, it’s often worth doing.

Recent invitations to speak in Istanbul or Croatia scared me witless, in a way. But they also intrigued me: Could I stand alone on stage and present to an audiences of 1,000 non-native English speakers a world away? Could I really do that?

Raw fear offers inspiration in the guise of regret—If I don’t do this, I’ll regret it. But it also inspires me to try more, do more, be more. As my friend Amy Gahran says:

Your comfort zone equals your dead zone

So there’s my answer to what inspires me, delivered just in time. (Because now I hear a child stirring from within the house….) So I’ll leave it with a question back to you: What inspires you professionally? The drive to create? Fear? Or something else entirely?