The Spirit of the Beehive

A band. A movie. A way of life.

One definition of being human

To be inspired.

One definition of being inspired

To disappear in order to appear.

Which means you surrender. You relinquish yourself to a greater power. The power of your idea, your imagination—the power of possibilities. Which is why people are literally willing to die for an idea. Because it can seem bigger and truer and more necessary and urgent than your very heartbeat.

One definition of finding inspiration

Inspiration rarely appears, of course, or at least not that big sweeping, overwhelming kind of inspiration. Inspiration likes to be invited in. Inspiration can actually be kind of shy, in fact, not knowing how or if it should speak.

So you have to ask it to come over and play. And the best invitation is to simply sit down and write. Or doodle. Or take a meandering walk. Or all three. The invitation is really your openness, your receptivity, your ability to get out of the world and into your head, or into the world and out of your head, or all of the above.

Receptivity is the key ingredient. Allow things in so they can swirl about in the cauldron of your ideas. Focus on becoming porous, as if your cells are blending with the world around you. Prepare yourself to open up with a polite welcoming.  

When you’re receptive, possibilities disclose themselves. You leave your “knowing self” behind, your agenda dissolves, your to-do list evaporates. Receptivity invites discourse. You allow yourself to entertain and embrace paradoxes. What is strange or forbidding unveils its unrecognized beauty, and you can see the luster that everything possesses in its own particular way.

Ask yourself what you have been unreceptive to? What people, experiences, ideas have you fended off? What happens when you allow yourself to be touched? How can you make receptivity a habit?

On that note

Here’s how the cellist Pablo Casals approached inviting inspiration into his daily practice:

“It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being. The music is never the same for me, never. Each day is something new, fantastic, unbelievable. That is Bach, like nature, a miracle!”

Because you mentioned music

I just went to this amazing music festival in Boise, Idaho, the Treefort Music Festival, and I forgot how much I could be inspired by live performances and live crowds and all of that good feeling, how when you’re in a scene like that the world doesn’t exist because you’re lost in a song and a moment.

I was here to talk about writing as a part of Storyfort (one of the many forts nested under Treefort). One night, at my wife Heather’s behest, I went to see The Spirit of the Beehive, a band I didn’t know (photo above). It’s safe to say I was entranced. It’s safe to say I want to go back and stay in that moment for a long time.

This festival was a reminder that it’s good to go out into the beehive of life and listen to its buzz.

Because you asked about The Spirit of the Beehive

Because a word: inspiration

It actually means to breathe in, to “infuse animation or influence,” especially by the divine.

My problem with this definition is that it positions inspiration as being outside of yourself, as coming from a god. I think you create inspiration by sitting down to create. I think if you write one sentence, it inspires another sentence.

Yes, there might be a mysterious, exterior, and perhaps divine force involved, but we all have divine breaths swirling within us. We’re all the divine.

Because whimsicality

What does Earth say to make fun of the other planets?

“You guys have no life!”¹

Because a Haiku

Everything I touch

with tenderness, alas,

pricks like a bramble.

~ Issa

Because prompts take us to new places

Use this photo as a prompt, as a random catalyst, as an igniter for any writing project you're working on.

Or … write a story about this photo in less than 300 words and share it here.

All the Comfort Sin Can Provide

If you like this newsletter, please consider checking out my recently released collection of short stories, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide.

Lidia Yuknavitch said:

“Somewhere between sinister and gleeful the characters in Grant Faulkner’s story collection All the Comfort Sin Can Provide blow open pleasure—guilty pleasure, unapologetic pleasure, accidental pleasure, repressed pleasure.” 

Grant Faulkner is executive director of National Novel Writing Month and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. He’s the author of Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo and the co-host of the podcast Write-minded. His essays on creative writing have appeared in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Lit Hub, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer.

For more, go to grantfaulkner.com, or follow him on Twitter at @grantfaulkner.

1. And my good friend Polly sends me jokes.