How do YOU stay inspired, Toni Morrison? I was already nursing a huge crush on Toni Morrison as she spoke about her fictional characters' natural limitations-- how, like you and I, they only know what they know. Her confiding tone, her flirtatious but never-bullshitty manner, made me (and every other "me" there to see her, I suspect) feel as if it were just us two on a porch together, at some place and time that compelled honesty to a fault. Ms. Morrison's interviewer, Professor Claudia Brodsky, drew an audience question from the stack of submitted index cards. She smiled at the author, a close friend and subject of her academic studies: "How do you stay inspired?" The Brooklyn temple, packed to the gills, hushed entirely to hear what Ms. Morrison would say, with her twinkling eyes and easy hands, with her direct simplicity and charm. Because, hell, this was like the elixir of creative life about to come from the Mouth of Literary Giant Morrison. This could fix all of our problems. She said WHAT? But Instead of haranguing the muse's poor attendance record, instead of telling us a recipe, a trick, her answer was both jubilant and matter-of-fact: "Because I can't not!" Right. She can't not stay inspired. Anyone else have that problem? "Because I have to be creative," she continued. "I have to be! It's me!" She said that the way a doctor might tell you your blood had to circulate. Let that sink in: queen of the novel, now well into her wisdom-years, in a wheelchair for unknown reasons, with her nest of braided hair resting in the curve of her neck like a crown worn backwards, continues to be creatively inspired not because she owes it to anyone, not because of any contract, not because of anything. Because that's who she is. She can't help you stay inspired-- but you can! All the desperate writers in the room, all the hungry writers, the people slightly disenchanted with their lot or lives or creative practice, all those Continue Reading …