Inspiration is a beautiful word when you break it down. It means “to breathe in,” from the Latin, in-spir-a-tus’. Some trace the word to “the immediate influence of God or gods” under which the holy books were written. In – spire – to breathe in spirit.
And there are those who believe that writing—the art of writing—is a holy act. I happen to be one of those people. This is not to say that what we write is always holy… not by a long shot, witness some of the very books you and I have written, some of today’s best sellers, 50 shades of books that have been judged as profane. Natalie Goldberg’s “worst junk in America,” Anne Lamott’s “shitty first drafts,” my own shambled notebooks. But the act of writing, that is what’s holy.