“What is Inspiration?” David Brooks, New York Times, says inspired “often feel that something is working through them,” but what? I say alternate personalities.

Brooks says, “Inspiration is not something you can control. People who are inspired have lost some agency. They often feel that something is working through them…The Greeks said it was the Muses…”

He asks, “What is Inspiration?” But he has no answer, concluding only that “Yes, hard work is really important for achievement. But life is more mysterious that just that.”

In my study of over fifty writers, I have begun to understand that inspiration comes to novelists (and perhaps others) from their alternate personalities.