industrial, commercial, ethical, religious, political.

) When an idea thinks it

has found somebody—say, you—who might be able to bring it into the
world, the idea will pay you a visit. It will try to get your attention. Mostly,
you will not notice. This is likely because you’re so consumed by your own
dramas, anxieties, distractions, insecurities, and duties that you aren’t
receptive to inspiration. You might miss the signal because you’re
watching TV, or shopping, or brooding over how angry you are at
somebody, or pondering your failures and mistakes, or just generally really
busy. The idea will try to wave you down (perhaps for a few moments;
perhaps for a few months; perhaps even for a few years), but when it finally
realizes that you’re oblivious to its message, it will move on to someone
else.

But sometimes—rarely, but magnificently—there comes a day when you’re

open and relaxed enough to actually receive something. Your defenses
might slacken and your anxieties might ease, and then magic can slip
through. The idea, sensing your openness, will start to do its work on you.
It will send the universal physical and emotional signals of inspiration (the
chills up the arms, the hair standing up on the back of the neck, the nervous
stomach, the buzzy thoughts, that feeling of falling into love or obsession).
The idea will organize coincidences and portents to tumble across your
path, to keep your interest keen. You will start to notice all sorts of signs
pointing you toward the idea. Everything you see and touch and do will
remind you of the idea. The idea will wake you up in the middle of the
night and distract you from your everyday routine. The idea will not leave
you alone until it has your fullest attention.

And then, in a quiet moment, it will ask, “Do you want to work with me?”
At this point, you have two options for how to respond.

What Happens When You Say No

T he simplest answer, of course, is just to say no.

Then you’re off the hook. The idea will eventually go away and—
congratulations!—you don’t need to bother creating anything.

To be clear, this is not always a dishonorable choice. True, you might

sometimes decline inspiration’s invitation out of laziness, angst, insecurity,
or petulance. But other times you might need to say no to an idea because it
is truly not the right moment, or because you’re already engaged in a
different project, or because you’re certain that this particular idea has
accidentally knocked on the wrong door.

I have many times been approached by ideas that I know are not right for
me, and I’ve politely said to them: “I’m honored by your visitation, but I’m
not your girl.

May I respectfully suggest that you call upon, say, Barbara Kingsolver?” (I
always try to use my most gracious manners when sending an idea away;
you don’t want word getting around the universe that you’re difficult to
work with.) Whatever your response, though, do be sympathetic to the poor
idea. Remember: All it wants is to be realized. It’s trying its best. It
seriously has to knock on every door it can.

So you might have to say no.

When you say no, nothing happens at all.
Mostly, people say no.
Most of their lives, most people just walk around, day after day, saying no,
no,

no, no, no.

Then again, someday you just might say yes.

What Happens When You Say Yes

I f you do say yes to an idea, now it’s showtime.

Now your job becomes both simple and difficult. You have officially
entered into a contract with inspiration, and you must try to see it through,
all the way to its impossible-to-predict outcome.

You may set the terms for this contract however you like. In contemporary
Western civilization, the most common creative contract still seems to be
one of suffering. This is the contract that says, I shall destroy myself and
everyone around me in an effort to bring forth my inspiration, and my
martyrdom shall be the badge of my creative legitimacy.

If you choose to enter into a contract of creative suffering, you should try to
identify yourself as much as possible with the stereotype of the Tormented
Artist. You will find no shortage of role models. To honor their example,
follow these fundamental rules: Drink as much as you possibly can;
sabotage all your relationships; wrestle so vehemently against yourself that
you come up bloodied every time; express constant dissatisfaction with
your work; jealously compete against your peers; begrudge anybody else’s
victories; proclaim yourself cursed (not blessed) by your talents; attach
your sense of self-worth to external rewards; be arrogant when you are
successful and self-pitying when you fail; honor darkness above light; die
young; blame creativity for having killed you.

Does it work, this method?

Yeah, sure. It works great. Till it kills you.
So you can do it this way if you really want to. (By all means, do not let me
or

anyone else ever take away your suffering, if you’re committed to it!) But
I’m not

sure this route is especially productive, or that it will bring you or your
loved ones enduring satisfaction and peace. I will concede that this method
of creative living can be extremely glamorous, and it can make for an
excellent biopic after you die, so if you prefer a short life of tragic glamour
to a long life of rich satisfaction (and many do), knock yourself out.

However, I’ve always had the sense that the muse of the tormented artist—
while the artist himself is throwing temper tantrums—is sitting quietly in a
corner of the studio, buffing its fingernails, patiently waiting for the guy to
calm down and sober up so everyone can get back to work.

Because in the end, it’s all about the work, isn’t it? Or shouldn’t it be? And
maybe there’s a different way to approach it?
May I suggest one?

A Different Way

Adifferent way is to cooperate fully, humbly, and joyfully with

inspiration.
This is how I believe most people approached creativity for most of history,

before we decided to get all La Bohème about it. You can receive your
ideas with respect and curiosity, not with drama or dread. You can clear out
whatever obstacles are preventing you from living your most creative life,
with the simple understanding that whatever is bad for you is probably also
bad for your work. You can lay off the booze a bit in order to have a keener
mind. You can nourish healthier relationships in order to keep yourself
undistracted by self-invented emotional catastrophes. You can dare to be
pleased sometimes with what you have created. (And if a project doesn’t
work out, you can always think of it as having been a worthwhile and
constructive experiment.) You can resist the seductions of grandiosity,
blame, and shame. You can support other people in their creative efforts,
acknowledging the truth that there’s plenty of room for everyone. You can
measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes
or failures. You can battle your demons (through therapy, recovery, prayer,
or humility) instead of battling your gifts—in part by realizing that your
demons were never the ones doing the work, anyhow. You can believe that
you are neither a slave to inspiration nor its master, but something far more
interesting—its partner—and that the two of you are working together
toward something intriguing and worthwhile. You can live a long life,
making and doing really cool things the entire time. You might earn a
living with your pursuits or you might not, but you can recognize that this
is not really the point. And at the end of your days, you can thank

creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate

existence. That’s another way to do it.
Totally up to you.

An Idea Grows

A nyhow, back to my story of magic.

Thanks to Felipe’s tale about the Amazon, I had been visited by a big idea:
to wit, that I should write a novel about Brazil in the 1960s. Specifically, I
felt inspired to write a novel about the efforts to build that ill-fated highway
across the jungle.

This idea seemed epic and thrilling to me. It was also daunting—what the
hell did I know about the Brazilian Amazon, or road construction in the
1960s?—but all the good ideas feel daunting at first, so I proceeded. I
agreed to enter into a contract with the idea. We would work together. We
shook hands on it, so to speak. I promised the idea that I would never fight
against it and never abandon it, but would only cooperate with it to the
utmost of my ability, until our work together was done.

I then did what you do when you get serious about a project or a pursuit: I
cleared space for it. I cleaned off my desk, literally and figuratively. I
committed myself to several hours of research every morning. I made
myself go to bed early so I could get up at dawn and be ready for work. I
said no to alluring distractions and social invitations so I could focus on my
job. I ordered books about Brazil and I placed calls to experts. I started
studying Portuguese. I bought index cards—my preferred method of
keeping track of notes—and I allowed myself to begin dreaming of this
new world. And in that space, more ideas began to arrive, and the outlines
of the story started to take shape.

I decided that the heroine of my novel would be a middle-aged American

woman named Evelyn. It is the late 1960s—a time of great political and
cultural upheaval— but Evelyn is living a quiet life, as she always has
done, in central Minnesota. She’s a spinster who has spent twenty-five
years working capably as an executive secretary at a large Midwestern
highway construction firm. During that entire time, Evelyn has been quietly
and hopelessly in love with her married boss—a kind, hardworking man
who never sees Evelyn as anything but an efficient assistant. The boss has a
son—a shady fellow, with big ambitions. The son hears about this giant
highway project going on down in Brazil and persuades his father to put in
a bid. The son uses his charm and coercion to convince the father to throw
the family’s entire fortune behind this enterprise. Soon enough, the son
heads down to Brazil

with a great deal of money and wild dreams of glory. Quickly, both the son
and the money vanish. Bereft, the father dispatches Evelyn, his most
trusted ambassador, to go to the Amazon to try to recover the missing
young man and the missing cash. Out of a sense of duty and love, Evelyn
heads to Brazil—at which point her orderly and unremarkable life is
overturned as she enters into a world of chaos, lies, and violence. Drama
and epiphanies follow. Also, it’s a love story.

I decided I would call the novel Evelyn of the Amazon.

I wrote a proposal for the book and sent it to my publishing company. They
liked it and they bought it. Now I entered into a second contract with the
idea—a formal contract this time, with notarized signatures and deadlines
and everything. Now I was fully invested. I got to work in earnest.