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The question

Do you rely more on inspiration or discipline to make your 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.

Jonathan Lethem

Novelist and essayist; National Book Critics Circle Award winner

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
So, yes, it is very hard work, and there are days where there’s something I have to do in the book, something I have to learn or put myself and the characters through that I am… That makes me fearful or sorrowful. But I do think also that this aspect of writing is over reported at the expense of the pleasurable aspect as well. If writers didn’t love to be in this space between themselves and their language, they probably wouldn’t do it. You’d give up.

The Talks, published interview, 27 March 2019 source ↗

Others on this question

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Suzan-Lori Parks Playwright, screenwriter and novelist; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 2002
It’s just a devotion to the greater beautiful thing that allows us all to be here. It sounds a little “woo-woo,” but basically, it’s manifested in me because I’m a writer. I get up every morning, and I write. I sit. As Paul knows, I sit. I have my notebook. I’m scribbling. “Don’t talk to me right now, honey. I’m writing.” That’s my thing. That’s how I manifest it. Someone who runs the hurdles, or a tennis player, would manifest it daily, going out there and hitting balls or whatever they do.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Washington, D.C., 22 June 2007 source ↗
John Banville Novelist; winner of the Booker Prize, 2005
I keep office hours. I work from 9:30 to 6:00. It’s curious. In the morning, I could just about tie my shoelaces before noon, but I can write. It’s obviously a different part of my brain that’s working.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, London, England, 18 October 2017 source ↗
Charles H. Townes Physicist; Nobel laureate in physics for the invention of the maser and laser
People tell me that I work hard. I never feel that I do particularly, because it’s fun. I always say, “Well, I’ve never worked hard in my life.” I’m busy, but most of what I do is enjoyable. It isn’t that it’s not tedious to some people, and so on, and of course I have routine to do, but I don’t mind it. I just don’t feel that I’m put upon. I spend a lot of time, but it’s fun. It’s a very intensive hobby. I would say it’s my most serious hobby. I have lots of hobbies, but the one permanent one is science, physics. So yes, I spend a lot of time, and I would agree with Edison, you have to work very hard and intensively.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Berkeley, California, 18 March 1991 source ↗
László Krasznahorkai Novelist; Nobel laureate in literature
The bitterness. I am very sad if I think of the status of the world now. This is my deepest inspiration. This could be also an inspiration for the next generation or generations in literature. Inspiration to give something for the next generation, somehow to survive this time because these are very, very dark times and we need much more power in us to survive this time than before.
Recorded Nobel Prize telephone interview with Jenny Rydén, published by Nobel Prize Outreach, The Nobel Prize, 9 October 2025 source ↗

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Louise Glück, John Banville, Athol Fugard, John Updike, Arlo Parks, Carlos Fuentes

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