Do you rely on inspiration or discipline to make work?

Originally asked

The Creative Independent, to working artists, its interview series

A repeated Creative Independent tension, asked as inspiration, muse, discipline, ritual, or the requirement to show up.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded John Updike said elsewhere, not written here
Right. It saves you from giving up. This present novel that will be out — Villages — I several times thought it might be a bad idea and kind of abandoned it. So, it was really the habit — the habit of writing that kept me at it in the end. It was like a bad marriage. I mean, whatever. This is the wife I’m married to here, and I’m going to finish this book. Finishing it becomes the only way to get rid of it. So yes, it’s good to have a certain doggedness to your technique.

Academy of Achievement interview, Chicago, Illinois, 12 June 2004 source ↗

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