One Percent Inspriation

We’ve all heard the phrase “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”. (Though several of the people I know would somehow add at least twenty-five percent caffeination to that equation.) Now, I don’t necessarily want to be Einstein or anything, but if you take genius to mean “a person of extraordinary intellect and talent”, then that’s what I want to be. Seriously? Only ONE measly percent? I must be doing something horribly wrong then, because getting inspired is one of the hardest things for me to do.

Now, being a Da Vinci-like genius wouldn’t be too shabby…

Well, as I was sifting through my ample pictures for future posting on the site, I was reminded of why photograph a lot of my work in the first place. In simple terms, it’s to provide a short-cut to inspiration. No, I’m not suggesting that I have found some magical way to instant message my muse through pictures (though, wouldn’t that be nice?) It’s just that the mere act of looking at my past work often causes my brain to start working in a different way. A more successful way.

Maybe that’s what they mean by the whole ninety-nine percent perspiration thing. If we assume that genius and success are interchangeable, then maybe the creations you’ve made in the past somehow accumulate to ensure your success in the future. It’s the whole  “Outliers Phenomenon” that my husband was telling me about. Simply put, author Malcolm Gladwell suggests that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. For me, reviewing my old work helps jump-start my brain to create new work.

But maybe we can also benefit from the 10,000 hours that other people put in. I am reminded of the collection of art cards and such that I’ve gathered over the years, which I will often look at to get inspired. Sadly, with the birth of my two boys and the resulting downsizing of my work space, they have remained boxed up in the basement. Until now. I decided that I wanted to have them handy once more, and though I don’t have the wall space to display they en masse, they would certainly look nice mounted on cardstock and compiled in book form.

Half of the art card collection – the rest are on the reverse.

“Why not just digitize them?”, you may ask. Well, it’s like when writers who spend a lot of time working on a computer change over to a pen-and-paper writing – their brains just start functioning differently. I want to see the collection all together – touch them, flip between them, compare them…and get myself off the computer every once in a while. So…do you have a short-cut you’d like to share?