Who is that coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?
Under the apple tree I aroused you.
There she who conceived you was in travail
There was there she who carried you was in travail

Song of Songs 8:5

The fact that the girl here is leaning upon her beloved may indicate the exhaustion of childbirth -- and the mention of arousal, conception, and the carrying of gestation, leading up to the travail or labour of birth, suggest that Solomon is speaking here of the sexual model of creativity mentioned earlier.

Inspiration and Perspiration
The repetition of the word travail serves, I suspect, to remind us that, according to that model, the birth of a new creation may well involve considerable "labour", depending on the scope of the project involved. No wonder Thomas Edison said that genius is one percent inspiration, typified by conception in this verse, and ninety-nine percent perspiration, and that it has also been defined as “an infinite capacity of taking pains”. However, like a mother, the dedicated creator accepts the labour of creation for the joy of bringing something new and beautiful into the world.

Abraham Maslow seems to have a similar message to Edison in mind when he says: "The difference between inspiration and the final product, for example, Tolstoy’s "War and Peace", is an awful lot of hard work, an awful lot of discipline, an awful lot of training, and awful lot of finger exercises and practices and rehearsals and throwing away of first drafts and so on.”.

The Gates of Excellence
“Before the Gates of Excellence”, says Ochse in his book of the same title, “the High Gods have placed sweat — the sweat of labour — often mingled with the sweat of pain". The resolute determination and unstinting industriousness of those who would enter those gates is well illustrated by voices of experience such as these:

“It took me five years to plan the series out, to plot through each of the seven novels . . . I almost always have complete histories for my characters” (An Interview with J.K. Rowling – Lindsey Fraser).

"Beethoven took no end of trouble with his music. The Sketchbooks . . . testify to Beethoven’s struggle in subjugating the operatic medium to what he wished to express . . . He made 18 starts on the tenor soliloquy in Act II. There are 10 versions of the final chorus." (George Marek – “Beethoven, Biography of a Genius”)

"I was industrious; whoever is equally sedulous will be equally successful" (J.S. Bach, composer).