Just waiting for inspiration to strike, as a writer, is standing in field on a warm summer day staring up at a clear blue sky, waiting for lightning.
It could happen, but you could be waiting a long long time…
If you want to be struck by the lightning you need to go stand in the field in the middle of a thunder storm and be prepared to get wet, windswept and bedraggled…
Even then, its is just a little more likely, but you will look awesome…
If you really want to be struck by the lightning of inspiration, you need to put in the effort, wear a full suit of plate mail, get a big iron sword, go stand in the field in then middle of the worst thunder storm in history and wave the sword about cursing the names of Thor, Zeus, Perun, Indra, Jupiter, Taranis and any other thunder god you can think of…
You still might not get struck by lightening, but at least you’ll have a story to tell. Even if the story is about a madman standing in a field curse thunder gods in full plate mail…
To quote Steven King, ‘Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work…’Nimue Brown puts this more elegantly than I in this blog, you should read it…
Inspiration isn’t something that always turns up on demand. For a person attempting to work creatively this can be a bit of an issue. It’s certainly the case that trying to create can be a way of inviting inspiration to come to you. If you aren’t making room for inspiration to happen, it’s not so likely to show up. Time contemplating can also work. Getting on with life and hoping inspiration will strike isn’t very effective at all.
My major source of inspiration has always been other people. That can work in a number of ways. Sometimes I get very excited about a person and that fills my head with ideas and makes me want to write. Some of the things I’ve written have been for specific people – that can mean writing blog posts on request, writing poems for people. I wrote my most recent book – Beyond Sustainability…
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The Passing Place 