Spirit Stories ... What is Inspiration?

What is inspiration? Where exactly does it come from? Do we really know? We can guess. We can surmise. We can say we know … but really, we don’t. It’s all supposition that each of us, in turn, decide to make it so.

As a professional biographer, it’s my job to take known facts, facts which indeed are truth, and lay them out in a logical timeline, in the way they actually happened in the subject’s life. It is my Number One priority to do so in such a way that I keep true to their truth, as best I can as an outsider to that individual—never having met him in person. There does come a time, however, when no matter how many facts are listed, no matter how many pieces are uncovered and tied together one-by-one in a factual line-up of the individual’s life story … there comes a time where there will be gaps with no story to be told. No facts to be uncovered. Not a thing, seemingly, to uncover, even by the nosiest of biographers with the most agreeable family members and friends to help.

So how does such a story get told? How does such a story find its “The End,” a required page for any book, fiction or nonfiction? My answer to this quandary is inspiration. Mine comes from The Spirit. The Spirit, for me, is God’s voice giving me a deep, penetrating look into the life of the person whose story it has become my job to tell at that particular time in history. Right then, it is his-story in history—or her-story in history.

I don’t ever want to write a biography that simply relates someone’s personal statistics and their professional credits. Anyone with half a brain can look that up these days. We don’t need a book to do so. I want to write books I want to read. I must be able to look straight into the individual’s soul, as best as can be done when that person is no longer here to directly tell me what they have seen, heard, said, and learned. How they’ve won and lost, loved and hated, given comfort and been comforted. Hurt someone and been wounded by someone.

How does The Spirit come to me? Am I simply a crazy woman with voices in my head? Some may think so. I really don’t care. That’s my form of inspiration. Sometimes there are voices in my head. I talk back to them. We have some amazing conversations. However that transpires, I always arrive at the other end with insight I did not previously have. Honest-to-gosh, before these exchanges I did not have the details which come to me. What’s more, from a biographical perspective, that insight, that inspiration, proves to be on target, strikingly accurate from the point of view of what literally happened in my subject’s life.

How do I know this? I know this because in the amount of time it takes me to secure that inspiration, I am moved from Point A to Point B. I am shown where I’m stuck, why I’m stuck, and how to get to where I can find the missing bit of detail to fill in the blanks of the timeline. Never fails me. Works every single time. Every … single … time.

I have Spirit Stories from each of my biographies which might seem to be, well, you decide what they are for yourself. Are they inspiration? Are they The Spirit? Are they the rantings of a crazy woman talking to herself? Whatever you choose to believe, for me, I know for certain that I get divine help when I write a biography. Every … single … time.

I’ll write about my Spirit stories in another essay soon. For now, let me know where you get your inspiration. Are you crazy like me?

https://authorsden.com/lindaalexander

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