It's grey, it's February and it's raining. Mind you it's not snow.
This is the acid test for me - to find inspiration not only to blog, but to create momentum to shoot myself into the day's work.
I've even done some ironing this morning - displacement activity of a high order.
I'm not glued to my computer like a lot of people but this morning because my brain seemed stuck in some primeval mud, I did some surfing.
I took a peek at some other writer's blogs - in this case Neil Gaiman. Now I have to admit to not reading many of his books but I did love his short story collection- short stories being more of a favourite genre than novels.
And after my flippant comment about not having snow, found an entry about him shovelling snow at midnight. Made me laugh, set off some light bulbs and now I'm off and running.
About to edit an article I wrote for a client Elizabeth Wray, last week about stopping smoking. She's outrageous in the way she works as a pyschologist and hypnotherapist so I can be, how shall I say, more direct than for some clients.
So what kicks you off to write, not only what you want to write, but maybe like me what you have to write?
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I wrote once that inspiration is a good idea and by that I mean that inspiration is nothing more than a good idea and if I get a good idea then I’ll pretty much drop everything to get it down on paper. The rest of the time I work with any ol’ idea. I don’t believe in muses but I do accept that we are at the mercy of our brains and we can’t manufacture ideas out of thin air. If we spent our entire lives in a cell with no external stimuli then I’m not sure we’d churn out masterworks ever time we put pen to paper. Good ideas are like pearls formed around a bit of grit (something external to ourselves), they’re something natural and beautiful. That doesn’t mean we can’t create artificial pearls but they’re never quite the same, are they? The question is whether you’re going to sit around waiting for a piece of grit or are you going to go out looking for one? Sometimes I have good ideas and sometimes I just have ideas. Not everything we write needs to be a staggering work of genius: oftentimes good enough is good enough.
ReplyDeleteHi Jim
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post. As ever you talk a lot of sense. Because I have deadlines to meet, I don't have the luxury of sitting around waiting for something to strke me. I was taught to write something, anything knowing that I can improve it when I go back to it. Even if the improving it means deleting all but a few words. What I've learned as a business writer is not to be frightened of changing text. Every time I show a piece to a client, the odds are firmly in favour of them wanting some changes even if I think I've hit the mark for them. My ego has no place in the process!