"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration," according to haughty inventor Thomas Edison. While this may be true of aligning cogs, greasing gears and screwing experimental light bulbs into position, I fail to see how it applies to other fields of creative endeavor.
It is hard to imagine, for example, Shakespeare's balding brow breaking into rivulets of pouring sweat while seated at his desk, quill in hand, thinking of a rhyme for his latest couplet. Blank verse is not easy to master, but its composition does not usually dampen the armpits of the poet.
In fact, I'd say that the completion of Hamlet required one hundred percent inspiration and zero percent perspiration — unless, of course, it was written on a particularly hot summer afternoon when the windows of Anne Hathaway's cottage were painted shut.
Not that such inescapable logic prevents me from marketing my own brand of "Genius" deodorant designed for inventors desirous of getting things done while maintaining a fresh scent about their persons. I even sell a pink version for the stay-at-home "maker" mom demographic.
If you're interested in numbers, I guess my deodorant was a fifty-fifty inspiration-perspiration requiring invention. The inspiration came at midnight while trying to fall asleep by watching an episode of the execrable Shark Tank. The perspiration was mostly a pool in the small of my back.
