"Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it"
About this Quote
L'Engle punctures the romantic myth of the muse as a lightning strike and replaces it with something more bracing: inspiration is a byproduct, not a prerequisite. The line is deceptively plain, but its real force is disciplinary. It shifts agency back onto the artist, implying that waiting to feel “ready” is often just a polished form of avoidance. Work isn’t what you do once inspiration arrives; work is the machine that produces it.
Coming from a novelist who wrote across decades, genres, and audiences, the quote reads like hard-earned craft advice, not motivational wallpaper. L'Engle’s fiction often treats mystery and imagination as serious tools, yet here she insists that imagination has a schedule. The subtext is almost ethical: if you care about the work, you show up even when you’re empty, because emptiness is part of the process. Inspiration, framed this way, is less a sacred visitation than a chemical reaction triggered by friction: the mind starts making connections only after it’s forced to handle sentences, scenes, problems.
There’s also a quiet democratizing impulse. If inspiration comes during work, then it’s not reserved for the innately gifted or theatrically sensitive. It’s available to anyone willing to endure the unglamorous middle minutes: the bad first drafts, the stubborn paragraphs, the rereads that feel like failure. L'Engle isn’t denying magic; she’s relocating it to the desk, where it can be earned.
Coming from a novelist who wrote across decades, genres, and audiences, the quote reads like hard-earned craft advice, not motivational wallpaper. L'Engle’s fiction often treats mystery and imagination as serious tools, yet here she insists that imagination has a schedule. The subtext is almost ethical: if you care about the work, you show up even when you’re empty, because emptiness is part of the process. Inspiration, framed this way, is less a sacred visitation than a chemical reaction triggered by friction: the mind starts making connections only after it’s forced to handle sentences, scenes, problems.
There’s also a quiet democratizing impulse. If inspiration comes during work, then it’s not reserved for the innately gifted or theatrically sensitive. It’s available to anyone willing to endure the unglamorous middle minutes: the bad first drafts, the stubborn paragraphs, the rereads that feel like failure. L'Engle isn’t denying magic; she’s relocating it to the desk, where it can be earned.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
|---|---|
| Source | Evidence: p. 143 (print pagination varies by edition). Primary source attribution is to L’Engle’s memoir The Summer of the Great-Grandmother (Crosswicks Journals #2), originally published in 1974. Multiple secondary references point to this book; one specifically gives page 143, but other sites cite differ... Other candidates (2) Madeleine L'Engle (Madeleine L'Engle) compilation97.8% ience quotes inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it the sum Her Inspiration (Mina Parker, 2005) compilation95.0% ... HONG KINGSTON Whatever muscles I have are the product of my own hard work and nothing else. EVELYN ASHFORD Inspir... |
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