At a conference this spring, in a group of historians and editors, one historian mentioned that Arthur Link placed a photograph of Woodrow Wilson at his writing table to inspire him. This historian went on to say that she had a portrait of Abraham Lincoln for the same purpose, and she asked me if maybe I had a picture of Theodore Roosevelt for motivation. No, I said. I have this:
I know, perhaps not a sporting answer. But a true one!
What helps you write?
The Edge of the American West 
45 comments
August 13, 2008 at 2:59 pm
ben wolfson
Did you blur out “fuck”, eric?
August 13, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Vance Maverick
He did indeed. What inspires me to write is a deadline. Unfortunately they work best right as they’re passing, so the first few hours after the thing is already late are often unusually productive.
August 13, 2008 at 3:09 pm
L
SpongeBob playing in the background.
August 13, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Vance Maverick
BTW, in that play, do the people who listen to that speech actually go on to sell more?
August 13, 2008 at 3:30 pm
ari
Eric is nothing if not decorous. As for me, fear of failure. It looms over me like a, um, spectral coalition of really scary fear things.
August 13, 2008 at 3:31 pm
ari
Plus, it’s really fun. Except when it isn’t. But even then, there’s failure to nudge me along.
August 13, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Neddy Merrill
I remember when I thought Eric was a nice guy. Seems like a thousand years ago.
August 13, 2008 at 4:21 pm
grackle
Probably before he started swimming. Now, he’s after Phelps, poor Phelps.
August 13, 2008 at 4:27 pm
SEK
My desktop.
August 13, 2008 at 5:04 pm
ac
Right now I have something from John Masefield on pirates in the notebook I carry around:
August 13, 2008 at 5:06 pm
eric
in that play, do the people who listen to that speech actually go on to sell more?
First, a pedantic note: as I understand it, the speech isn’t in the play, just in the movie. Second, that’s an interesting question.
August 13, 2008 at 5:13 pm
grackle
Third, the implication of using that speech to motivate oneself is profoundly disturbing, as if ones writings are the equivalent of Florida swampland and one’s reward for writing will probably be the steak knives, if one is lucky.
August 13, 2008 at 5:16 pm
eric
You’re assuming it’s a direct motivation (and so is Vance)—as if I were imagining myself sitting in the boiler room listening to Blake, as opposed to an indirect motivation—I don’t want to end up sitting in a boiler room listening to Blake.
August 13, 2008 at 5:17 pm
ari
I would take the steak knives, grackle. I should be so lucky.
August 13, 2008 at 5:19 pm
eric
as if ones writings are the equivalent of Florida swampland
Also, this is a misreading of the salesmen, who are not selling the land, but who are selling something much bigger.
August 13, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Wrongshore
I used to have a bit from the first (?) edition of n+1 that was commenting on Lionel Trilling: “The moral obligation isn’t to be intelligent–it’s to think.”
August 13, 2008 at 5:27 pm
coyotebanjo
Portrait of Manjusri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjusri#Iconography). And Dick Gaughan or Mathlathini howling on the headphones.
August 13, 2008 at 5:52 pm
bitchphd
Fear of failure keeps me from writing. What helps me write is a sense that I’m doing it as a favor to someone else; therefore, having some kind of personal connection is important. Luckily “personal connections” can take the form, I have learned, of casual chatty emails. But formal cold-call type submission letters to anonymous strangers and the such? Death.
August 13, 2008 at 6:24 pm
A White Bear
This is sad, but the thing that makes me write is feeling smart. I never write so much as when I’ve just had a conversation about my work in which I felt really competent and like I had something important to contribute. That, and, yeah, deadlines. But even deadlines just make me a little depressed.
August 13, 2008 at 6:47 pm
PorJ
3 things were posted in my carrel board when I was finishing the dissertation. 1) A picture clipped from the local alternative newspaper of smiling Rastus, the Cream of Wheat chef, with the words: “No Mo’ o this Sh*t” written underneath (it was to illustrate the listing of a new subversive art exhibi), 2) The following Joseph Conrad quote, from Heart of Darkness
3) A photo of my teammates and I (in action!) engaged in a D-I national championship athletic contest.
August 13, 2008 at 6:58 pm
bitchphd
I had a quotation from Johnson to the effect that anyone can write at any time if they’ll just do it.
Which was no use at all, really. What helped was the baby. Johnson, never having had a baby, didn’t know this, though.
August 13, 2008 at 7:04 pm
ari
PorJ, did you win?
August 13, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Neddy Merrill
Fear of failure keeps me from writing.
Ahhahahahahahaahahaha. hah. h– eh.
August 13, 2008 at 7:17 pm
grackle
Two quotes I’ve varied having at my desk-
“Damn the Rules, it’s the Feeling that Counts. You play all twelve notes in your solo anyway.” John Coltrane
“Happy is he who is always praying” Hafiz
August 13, 2008 at 7:23 pm
todd.
LeechBlock.
August 13, 2008 at 7:37 pm
PorJ
Ari: I don’t want to give myself up, but the sport was rowing, we came in second (although, according to our ranking, we should not have made the final). Two members of that boat went on to represent the USA in the Olympics but I was not one of them.
August 13, 2008 at 7:39 pm
ari
I’ll not pry any more. I rowed also, at Wisconsin, though I was not in a boat that enjoyed such success.
August 13, 2008 at 7:39 pm
ben wolfson
I have a piece of paper like Eric’s on the bottom of my monitor, but mine reads
I find it very motivating.
August 13, 2008 at 7:40 pm
ben wolfson
You see, I accidentally wrote </w> rather than </q> after that first “Run!”, which accounts for the formatting of that comment. I’m sure you can work out how it ought to have appeared.
August 13, 2008 at 7:54 pm
ari
Nope. I’m afraid I can’t. I’m lost in a sea of muddled formatting.
August 13, 2008 at 8:11 pm
ben wolfson
Ah, I forgot about your particular requirements, ari. It should look as follows:
I have a piece of paper like Eric’s on the bottom of my monitor, but mine reads
I find it very motivating.
August 13, 2008 at 8:12 pm
ben wolfson
omg. WordPress fucks it up its own self! The HTML scrubber doesn’t allow nested <q> tags, even though they’re supposed to be nestable. Well isn’t this interesting.
August 13, 2008 at 8:30 pm
ari
That’ll show you.
August 13, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Neddy Merrill
I can see how powerfully the text motivates you to work, Ben.
August 13, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Gene O'Grady
I have a 19th century print of General Henry W Halleck on my desk. There’s controlling what the country antique dealers will sell you for twenty bucks.
Maybe I’m paying tribute to the old California constitution? I was taught in high school that it was a model until Dennis Kearny got hold of it and it’s been downhill ever since.
August 13, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Amos Anan
Not really related to the core topic but when I saw the Glengarry Glen Ross film there was an outdoor scene (rare for a theatrical based production) that instantly caught my eye. It was a night scene and so not so easy to distinguish, but it was familiar to me. Sheepshead Bay. Specifically, Sheepshead Bay Road in Brooklyn. I immediately laughed and told friends who were with me. They were from the area though had moved away a few years before. They didn’t catch it and were probably thinking I was a bit nuts. (Possibly true but that was not a quality indicator.) Luckily within a minute or two the scene was repeated but this time during daylight. The sign for the Sheepshead Bay Road elevated subway stop was clearly visible.
Anyway, the type of arrogant people that spout lines like that are usually George W. Bush or John McCain types who were born to their third base positions or married into them rather than having hit anything vaguely approaching a triple. But they’re worth every penny they get while working stiffs aren’t.
August 14, 2008 at 12:16 am
andrew
It never occurred to me until reading this post ever to attach something motivational to my computer screen/monitor.
August 14, 2008 at 12:20 am
andrew
(I did once have this (slow loading, no longer always working, image link) as my desktop background to signify that lots of things needed to get done.)
August 14, 2008 at 12:22 am
ben wolfson
Look back in anger, Neddy.
August 14, 2008 at 6:52 am
PorJ
Ari – did you row for Jablo? We might have bumped into each other or traded shirts in the dorms at Syracuse. I know some Wisco rowers but would rather not give up my anonymity quite yet.
My silver medal is from the IRAs back when it was on good old Lake Onandaga, which is not strictly a “national championship” as Harvard and Yale were not there in my day (I think they race in the IRAs today). Or maybe we passed each other in the dining hall – remember how they had the “Tray of” thing scratched in on all the trays? I guess I’m dating myself here, it shows how long ago this was – the dining hall at Syracuse was an actual dining hall not an expensive food-court as all Universities have them today.
Are you watching the Olympics or following it on Row2k.com?
August 14, 2008 at 7:04 am
Jeff Boatright
On my board:
“You have to go as fast as you can, no matter how slow that is.” – old racer’s quote
“I’m not interested in a marketable product: I’m interested in what I know from my life experience to be standards of excellence” – Barney Kessel
August 14, 2008 at 10:04 am
Alison
I write for teenagers. It’s way harder than it may seem like it would be. Especially when you’re trying to teach them things. With words.
Anyway, on my monitor:
“Writing…is an act of faith: I believe it is also an act of hope, the hope that things can be better than they are.” – Margaret Atwood
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” – Anais Nin
“In dreams begins responsibility.” – Yeats
God, I am so emo.
August 14, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Rob_in_Hawaii
A friend had this posted on her monitor:
“Research is fun; writing is work.”
Alas, if only I had internalized that message I might have finished the dissertation years sooner.
August 14, 2008 at 1:50 pm
learnlotsbetty
Writing isn’t my job, per se, but there’s a lot of writing to be done in it. Responding to a ton of emails every day, messaging, reporting, blahde. I have a boring fortune from a cookie–“it’s up to you to make the next move”–and numbers of this to accomplish this year:
47,982 hours
3,600 volunteers
480,000 dollars
add up to
400,000 _____ delivered to
1800 clients, of whom
95 percent are impoverished
It works. But I’m also adding workbird.
August 14, 2008 at 1:51 pm
learnlotsbetty
*numbers of things