I would imagine most of us think of inspiration as a sudden flash of insight that hits us out of nowhere and compels us create. It’s not something we control. The wind blows where it wishes and we don’t know where it comes from or where it goes.

But what if inspiration were a discipline?

Brooklyn-based author and artist Carey Wallace has written an incredible book titled, The Discipline of Inspiration. Here, she addresses this question and shines a new light on how we think about our relationship to the things that move us.

Poet and songwriter Patti Smith writes that "This book articulates... the beautiful compexity of what drives us to create and what we encounter when we do."

In keeping with our season theme of finding flow, consider how nurturing our inspirations prepare us for those beautiful moments of creative transport. We’ll be talking more about this in the Makers and Mystics creative collective.

Music by: Some Were At Sea

Faith and Art, finding flow, flow, InspirationStephen RoachMay 6, 2025finding flow, inspiration

S7 E06: The Discipline of Inspiration with Carey Wallace

Carey Wallace is the author of Stories of the Saints, The Blind Contessa’s New Machine, The Ghost in the Glass House, Choose, New Thing, and the forthcoming Discipline of Inspiration. Her work has appeared in Time, the Awl, The New Decameron, and Detroit’s Metro Times. She has spoken to students at Princeton, Yale, Julliard, Pratt, Emory’s Candler School of Theology, and the Festival of Faith and Writing, and taught at The Glen Workshop. She has released a dozen records with her brother as The Wallace Bros., and shown her fine artwork in Detroit and Brooklyn. She is the founder of the Working Artist’s Initiative, which helps emerging artists establish strong creative habits, and the Hillbilly Underground, which draws nationally-recognized filmmakers, writers, fine artists, and musicians to rural Michigan each summer. She lives and works in Brooklyn with her poorly-behaved Appenzeller, Bandit.

In this episode, Stephen talks with Carey LIVE in New York City (recorded October 2019) about the nature, the origins and discipline of inspiration.

authors, creativity, Inspiration, Live Events, Makers & Mystics Live, spiritual disciplinesStephen RoachApril 24, 2020inspiration, Carey Wallace, spiritual disciplines