“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King
When your muse is drowsy, what do you do to get to work?
10 thoughts on “Reader Friday: Waiting for Inspiration?”
I just go ahead and do what is there to do, trying at the same time to follow my fun-detecting antenna. Meaning, that in whatever I do, I am looking for the fun part in it, or how I can create that fun part (for example, if I have to clean the house, then I sing along or think which of my characters would love cleaning and why). The inspiration catches up with me time to time. I guess it is just like me, a girl, and “Girls just wanna have fun!”. ;D
P.S. Thank you Jim, for this and other questions on Reader Friday. What a great idea these Reader Fridays! I love 99.9999% of the days and posts here in TKZ, but I must say that Reader Fridays are absolutely fun! 🙂
I write blog posts, work on critiques from and for my crit partners. Think about how if I don’t get writing, “someone” will expect me to do housework–that usually gets me going. Write or clean toilets? A no brainer for me.
Well, when I’m successful at fighting drowsy muse: I either go do some research, which almost always charges up my battery; I work on another project; as Terry mentioned, sometimes it helps to crit for someone else briefly before going back to my work.
That “work on another project” thing is blessing and curse. It can lead to hopping around, which is why I have several projects and none 100% finished.
Where I live, I can’t seem to find other writers to talk to face-to-face, so I contact the writers I’ve known for years, and get charged up again… maybe because they understand.
I rub the dry sleep out of the corners of my eyes. Drop one leg at a time to the floor. Thud. Thud. I wriggle into my robe so I don’t have to hear my roommate scream. I find my way to the kitchen – using the wall as a guide. I make a large cup of instant coffee with chilled water. I walk outside barefoot to check the sprinklers. I feel the cold mist beating on my legs. Checked. Bam. I’m awake. I wake up my computer. It begins to rub the sleep from it’s eyes. Ready. Go.
What happens if you’re out of Instant coffee? 😉
When I was feeling uninspired and discouraged, a writer friend suggested Julia Cameron’s The Artists’s Way. Her advice to write three stream of consciousness longhand pages first thing every morning has turned out to be surprisingly helpful. But of course you also have to be willing to write without inspiration and to write badly, knowing that sooner or later the juice will start to flow and until then you just throw it out.
It’s amazing. Something like 24 years since The Artist’s Way was published and I’ve lost count of the number of people she has inspired. How cool is that?
I go for a run. Outside because for some reason, inside on a treadmill doesn’t work. And since it’s the dead of summer in Florida and only fools run in this heat, I am not getting much done. But off to Michigan soon so I have hope.
Peace to all on this dark day.
Yes, you’re right. The effect can be almost miraculous. I can’t run any more but brisk walking is almost as good.
I know what you mean about Michigan because I grew up there and am feeling homesick, in spite of all the guns.
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King
I just go ahead and do what is there to do, trying at the same time to follow my fun-detecting antenna. Meaning, that in whatever I do, I am looking for the fun part in it, or how I can create that fun part (for example, if I have to clean the house, then I sing along or think which of my characters would love cleaning and why). The inspiration catches up with me time to time. I guess it is just like me, a girl, and “Girls just wanna have fun!”. ;D
P.S. Thank you Jim, for this and other questions on Reader Friday. What a great idea these Reader Fridays! I love 99.9999% of the days and posts here in TKZ, but I must say that Reader Fridays are absolutely fun! 🙂
I write blog posts, work on critiques from and for my crit partners. Think about how if I don’t get writing, “someone” will expect me to do housework–that usually gets me going. Write or clean toilets? A no brainer for me.
Well, when I’m successful at fighting drowsy muse: I either go do some research, which almost always charges up my battery; I work on another project; as Terry mentioned, sometimes it helps to crit for someone else briefly before going back to my work.
That “work on another project” thing is blessing and curse. It can lead to hopping around, which is why I have several projects and none 100% finished.
Where I live, I can’t seem to find other writers to talk to face-to-face, so I contact the writers I’ve known for years, and get charged up again… maybe because they understand.
I rub the dry sleep out of the corners of my eyes. Drop one leg at a time to the floor. Thud. Thud. I wriggle into my robe so I don’t have to hear my roommate scream. I find my way to the kitchen – using the wall as a guide. I make a large cup of instant coffee with chilled water. I walk outside barefoot to check the sprinklers. I feel the cold mist beating on my legs. Checked. Bam. I’m awake. I wake up my computer. It begins to rub the sleep from it’s eyes. Ready. Go.
What happens if you’re out of Instant coffee? 😉
When I was feeling uninspired and discouraged, a writer friend suggested Julia Cameron’s The Artists’s Way. Her advice to write three stream of consciousness longhand pages first thing every morning has turned out to be surprisingly helpful. But of course you also have to be willing to write without inspiration and to write badly, knowing that sooner or later the juice will start to flow and until then you just throw it out.
It’s amazing. Something like 24 years since The Artist’s Way was published and I’ve lost count of the number of people she has inspired. How cool is that?
I go for a run. Outside because for some reason, inside on a treadmill doesn’t work. And since it’s the dead of summer in Florida and only fools run in this heat, I am not getting much done. But off to Michigan soon so I have hope.
Peace to all on this dark day.
Yes, you’re right. The effect can be almost miraculous. I can’t run any more but brisk walking is almost as good.
I know what you mean about Michigan because I grew up there and am feeling homesick, in spite of all the guns.