Ahem. To find inspiration, you sit in front of your laptop or your pad of paper, and you wait. You wait quietly and without complaint. You wait for the thunderbolt, the lightning strike, the flash of genius. You do not write, you do not draw, you do not do anything. You are an automaton awaiting the gift of inspiration. If you betray inspiration by getting to work, inspiration will betray you…
At least, that’s what inspiration tries to convince you of. Inspiration tells you that you’ll feel inspired if you wait for it to visit. It claims to have your best interests at heart. Inspiration is a liar, though, and a flake. You have no guarantee that you’ll find inspiration if you wait for it to come. Inspiration is not a friend; it’s the unbidden specter that arrives to awaken you from you sleep. It’s a siren telling you to wait and wait and wait until you end up crashing into the rocks along the shoreline. You then wonder how you almost drowned and why you ever bothered to listen to that siren song in the first place. You knew and know the truth about inspiration; why did you think this time would be different?
No, to find inspiration, you have to, as dear Edison would say, perspire. You quit waiting for inspiration to appear. You stop listening to her siren song about how you’re supposed to wait and, if you don’t, how you’re betraying her. You get to work. You sit in front of your laptop and put words on the screen. You stand in front of your easel and draw. You are in a war, and, in this war, your best option is to strike first and fast before you lose yourself in inspiration’s song. You do not wait for inspiration. You do not waste time looking for it. You get to work and let inspiration find you.
Image: BK (CC BY 2.0)
love this post, Erin! I especially love how you start it. makes me giggle 🙂
itsjessicann I’m glad you enjoyed it! I think I was feeling extra snarky when I wrote it. 😉
BEAUTIFUL! Love it, Erin.
lauraclick Thank you! It was fun to write.
So true.
No one ever has a great idea when they set time aside to have a great idea. I was talking about this with a couple of co-workers yesterday, often you just have to cram your brain full of information and questions and then see what sticks.
JoeCardillo I’ll have to see if I can find the blog post, but a blogger uses the “McDonald” factor to get ideas going. He says that no one ever knows where they want to go for lunch, but mention McD’s and everybody suddenly has an opinion. The same goes for developing ideas. Put the bad ones out there and see what good things turn up.
JoeCardillo Blog post found: https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/9216e1c9da7d.
Erin F. JoeCardillo Very cool. It’s true, too, you have to throw a lot of stuff at the wall to see what sticks
absolutely, It amazes me to find how inspired I was after simply beginning to scribble some notes. suddenly whole pages appeared from nowhere like a miracle
@rl toney Yes, it’s often while working that we find ourselves inspired. The ideas and words multiply – they’re a bit like rabbits at times.
A smart writer should be a Clever Thief while
Stealing Inspirations,squeezing out ideas from famous writings.
For example ,I used to use an ipad app named “Novel
Idea Master”—just copy contents from masterpieces or from net,the app will
auto split the contents ,and generate new ideas for you to select .
I like the method easy and efficient.