This article deals with the issues of the creative process explored by Adam Zagajewski in his writings, especially in his poems forming the cycle of Autoportraits. Indeed, he revisited the subject on numerous occasions, pointing to the importance of inspiration, which, he regretted, received too little attention in today’s world. Be it as it may, in the end it all comes down to the question about how he actually wrote his poems. This article is the first attempt to reconstruct the methods of Zagajewski’s creative work; it also retraces the process of writing a single poem from a poetic note to its final version.