Don’t Wait For Divine Inspiration!

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[00:00:00.000] - Oliver (Host)

What is wrong with me lately? Why do I keep procrastinating? Why do I keep putting things off? How do I fix this? These are questions that you may ask yourself as often as I have been recently.

[00:00:15.260] - Oliver (Host)

I've been releasing episodes for this podcast and the advanced version later and later. I'm supposed to release this intermediate episode on Mondays and the advanced on Thursdays, but I'm not entirely sure that I've ever achieved that. Certainly not both episodes on the correct day in the same week. But in fact, it's becoming so delayed, so pushed back, that last time, I think I released the advanced episode on the Monday and the intermediate on the Thursday, both of them three days late. Occasionally, it becomes so late, so overdue, that I start asking myself that simple question: what exactly is going on with me here? Well, part of the problem, part of the issue is that I think I'm waiting for creative inspiration to strike. I'm waiting for an idea to appear, to arrive, to come to me fully formed, already perfectly thought out. But what happens when that doesn't happen? What do I do if the inspiration never arrives?

[00:01:21.140] - Oliver (Host)

But I know this is something that many, many people over the course of history have experienced: this exasperating, this frustrating lack of inspiration. Maybe we can learn something from the writers of the past, from poets and authors who also faced a blank page, a page with nothing on it, a silent mind and the pressure to create. Welcome to English and Beyond, the intermediate version of the podcast. As ever, there is a free transcript available at www.morethanalanguage.com, as well as free flashcards and free vocab exercises to help you consolidate, to help you learn the words that you will hear today. Back to the episode.

[00:02:08.820] - Oliver (Host)

The truth is, listener, I'm not an artistic or creative person. I never have been. My art teacher actually laughed in my face when we discussed the possibility of me choosing Art GCSE, one of the national public exams you take at 16 in the UK. So there's something deeply ironic, almost absurd, almost ridiculous, about the fact that I now have a job where I must invent a new creative topic twice a week, once for this podcast and once for the advanced version. Thank goodness, I'm not an actual artist - I wouldn't survive the pressure, for sure.

[00:02:48.600] - Oliver (Host)

So, here I am, sitting at my desk, staring at this blank page, looking at an empty document on my laptop, feeling more and more frustrated that no ideas are coming to me. And yet, as often happens, a small thought, a tiny idea appears. A memory, an association, something from the past. As I've mentioned before, I studied Latin and Ancient Greek at university. And because of that, I read some of the most famous and respected poems ever written, in the original languages, and I saw how the ancient world approached inspiration, how they explained the concept of creativity itself. More than 2,500 years ago, poets developed a stylistic habit. They began their works, they began their writings by asking for divine help, for help from the gods, from the divine beings that rule over us. For example, here is one of the most famous lines in all of literature, the opening of the epic ancient Greek poem about the Trojan War, authored by the ancient poet, Homer, the Iliad: sing, O Goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans, that is, upon the Greeks.

[00:04:11.300] - Oliver (Host)

Similarly, the Odyssey, the story of the Greek hero, Odysseus returning home from the Trojan War, which, incidentally, is being turned into a major feature film this year, begins with the line, Tell me, Muse, of the man of many turns.

[00:04:27.560] - Oliver (Host)

So who was this goddess, who was this muse, that Homer invokes that he calls upon? In Greek mythology, the muses were divine figures whose role, whose job was to inspire poets, artists, and creative people. Writers would pray to them and ask them, even beg them for inspiration. If the muses did not favour you, if they did not support you, your work would be worse, less good. It might feel weaker, less powerful. Your audience would be unimpressed. In these opening lines, the poet is essentially saying, Please, Goddess, tell me this story, and tell me it in a particularly beautiful way so that I can then pass it onto my audience and impress them. It becomes almost like a trade: I praise you, Muse, at the beginning of my poem, and you grant me, creativity. Interestingly, these goddesses have given us a modern word that we use regularly without knowing its origin in English and in other European languages.

[00:05:35.720] - Oliver (Host)

Today, a muse often refers to an ordinary person, though sometimes an especially attractive or charismatic person who inspires an artist. A singer, a poet, a writer, a screenwriter might describe this person as their muse, someone so vivid, so energetic, so full of life or so beautiful that they seem almost sent by the gods to inspire the art. But even as I talk about the Muses, listener, I recognise that what I'm doing here, writing a podcast script designed to help people learn English, is obviously much less glamorous, much less poetic, much less beautiful than composing an epic poem. Writing an intermediate-level script for a podcast episode can sometimes feel less like a labour of love and more like a grind, a routine, a task that simply has to be completed. For example, I don't think anybody has ever dedicated a language learning podcast episode to someone they love.

[00:06:43.080] - Oliver (Host)

So perhaps I need to look for inspiration somewhere else, somewhere less poetic, somewhere more earthbound, more practical, less divine, somewhere closer to real life. Because history is full of examples, countless examples, of famous writers who struggled to create, who found themselves unable to begin their task. There have also been countless teenagers struggling with the same thing at school.

[00:07:10.820] - Oliver (Host)

We call this problem writer's block, a block being an obstacle, in this case, something mental that is in the way of the writer that prevents the writer from getting started. If the ancient poets explicitly asked the gods for inspiration, modern writers seem to have taken a different approach. From what I've read, they didn't sit around waiting for lightning to strike or for creativity to arrive like a miracle. Instead, they built systems. They devised techniques to help themselves, small habits beliefs, strange routines, practical tricks that allowed them to keep writing even when they felt blocked, tired, or uninspired. And that's interesting to me because it suggests that creativity isn't always about talent or motivation. Sometimes, it's simply about finding ways to reduce the resistance between you and your work. So rather than asking, How do I get to feel more inspired?, these writers asked a more practical question, How do I keep going when I don't feel inspired at all? Take Ernest Hemingway, for example, one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century, known for novels like The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

[00:08:33.560] - Oliver (Host)

His writing style is often described as direct, economical, almost deceptively simple. But behind that simplicity was a very disciplined approach to the craft of writing, to the art of writing. Hemingway struggled with beginnings. Starting fresh each morning could feel heavy, slow, even intimidating. So he invented a rule that sounds strange at first. Never finish your work each day cleanly in a tidy way. Instead of ending a writing day with a neat conclusion, he would stop mid-sentence or halfway through a scene. That way, the next morning, he wasn't facing an empty page or a silent mind. He was simply continuing a thought already in motion. He also spoke about writing one true sentence, reducing the enormous task of writing a novel to something small and manageable. The aim wasn't brilliance or perfection. It was momentum, movement, forward motion. One of my favourite authors, the Queen of Crime herself, Agatha Christie, approached the creative block from a completely different perspective. Christie, whose detective novels have sold hundreds of millions of copies, lived through periods of intense personal stress and exhaustion, including her famous disappearance in 1926. Later in life, she reflected on how routine, the same room, the same desk, the same habits, could begin to suffocate creativity rather than support it.

[00:10:12.100] - Oliver (Host)

Instead of forcing herself to be productive in one fixed place. She changed environments constantly. She wrote on trains, in hotel rooms, and even at archaeological excavation sites while travelling with her husband. The physical movement seemed to unlock mental movement. New landscapes, new sounds, new rhythms of life gave her story's fresh energy, as if the changing scenery helped her imagination breathe again. Maya Angelou, meanwhile, developed a ritual that feels almost the opposite of Christie's restless movement. Angelou, poet, memoirist, and author of I Know Why the Caged Bird sings, often described how intimidating the blank page could feel even after she had achieved global recognition. Her solution was to create a neutral, almost anonymous writing space. She rented simple hotel rooms with very little decoration, bringing only a dictionary, yellow writing pads, and a few essentials. She would arrive early, write for hours, and then leave the room each afternoon without editing at night. By separating writing from home life, identity and expectations, she turned creativity into a a quiet routine rather than a dramatic performance. The space itself became a signal. When she entered the room, she wrote, not because she felt inspired, but because the ritual made writing feel normal, even inevitable.

[00:11:46.320] - Oliver (Host)

And then on the other end of the scale, that is, with a completely different perspective, you have George R. R. Martin, the creator of A Song of Ice and Fire, the fantasy series that inspired Game of Thrones. Martin is perhaps the most famous modern example of a writer whose progress has slowed dramatically. Fans have been waiting more than a decade for The Winds of Winter, the long-promised next novel, while the previous book, A Dance with Dragons, was published back in 2011. Instead of forcing himself to complete the main storyline at all costs, Martin often moves sideways into related projects, writing fictional histories of Westeros, editing anthologies, working on television adaptations or expanding the law of the same universe. Some readers see this as hopeless procrastination. Others see it as a strategy for survival. By shifting focus within the same creative world, he keeps the imaginative engine running without confronting the most difficult chapters head-on. It's a reminder that productivity doesn't always look linear, it's not always a straight line, and that sometimes staying creatively active matters more than finishing a single task quickly. For example, I'm writing this episode while procrastinating on completing another two which are almost 85% complete. It's like useful procrastination.

[00:13:13.820] - Oliver (Host)

When you look at these writers together, what's striking is that none of them relied on motivation alone. They weren't waiting to feel ready. Each one reduced what psychologists might call cognitive fiction, the small mental barriers that make starting feel heavy or exhausting. Hemingway removed the fear of the blank page. Christie refreshed her thinking by changing context. Angelou controlled her environment so that distractions and expectations disappeared. Martin allows himself to stay creative without forcing a single stubborn task. Different personalities and different genres, but the same underlying principle: you need to actively make the work easier to begin, easier to continue, and less emotionally charged. Don't wait for inspiration.

[00:14:03.880] - Oliver (Host)

And as I sit here thinking about my own writing, scripts for this podcast, ideas for future episodes, the totally self-applied pressure of releasing something every week, I realise that maybe I've been approaching creativity in the wrong way. Because if there's one thing these modern writers seem to agree on, it's this: creativity doesn't always arrive first. Sometimes you start moving, and creativity follows behind.

[00:14:33.300] - Oliver (Host)

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider following, subscribing, leaving a review, commenting, anything that helps a podcast to grow, and that helps me to produce new episodes for you. It might even inspire me. Thank you very much for listening, and I will see you next time.