Mindy Altman, Faculty, Department of English
Can inspiration be taught? Students, especially those who are less experienced writers, often believe that they cannot write if they are not inspired, and that they somehow must wait to be so.
Ken Nielsen, CUNY Writing Fellow
Is pretence of simplicity implicit dishonesty? Yes, it is.
Outline, draft, draft, revise, proofread; Standing in front of the blackboard explaining how to write an academic essay: the professor suddenly realizes that this is not how writing happens. And, most certainly not in that professor’s own ivory colored room piled high with drafts, crumbled pages and unruly dust-bunnies.
William Blick, Masters student, Graduate School of Library and Information Studies
The discussion of how to attain inspiration has been the subject of mythology, fiction, and textbooks, as well as a source of concern for scholars, poets, musicians, and artists. For the writer, the question of how to locate creative impetus and the wherewithal to complete a successful piece of writing is timeless.
Cathy Callis, Faculty, Aaron Copland School of Music
In the words of the great pianist, conductor and author Daniel Barenboim, “the person who wants to listen actively will get more out of the music than the person who just sits there waiting to be inspired.” Such, in part, was a premise for the design of the course Music Performance in New York, offered during the Fall 2008 semester.
Javier Berzal, BA/MA student, Department of Philosophy
Descartes insulated himself to write his Meditations. The outcome: an untold number of thinkers arguing that he neglected our basic interactions with the world. Were Descartes to have written in an Amsterdam tavern, his conclusions would have been different.
Cheryl Dym, CUNY Writing Fellow
Although I am a graduate student in psychology, I’m no Freudian. However, I believe that inspiration can be found anywhere, even within the realm of Freudian psychoanalytic theory.
Jason Tougaw, English/Writing Across the Curriculum
You can’t count on inspiration, but with a routine of constant, informal writing, you can approximate inspiration. That’s why I ask students to author blogs in the courses I teach.
Story by Ugo Eze
Drawing by Eugene Henderson
Story by Ugo Eze Drawing by Eugene Henderson...