i think inspiration is less something i “find” and more something i stop running from. when i was younger i thought it was supposed to feel like lightning. now it’s more like… noticing. paying attention to the stuff i usually bulldoze past. the weird thought i have while i’m wiping down a table at work. the way someone says something sideways and it sticks in my ribs. the moment i catch myself feeling too much and want to shut it down.
i don’t chase muses anymore. i just try to stay open long enough for something to land.
and honestly, half the time the thing that inspires me is the thing that annoys me. the thing i can’t let go of. the thing i wish i didn’t care about. that’s usually where the real writing is hiding.
so i guess my answer is: i foster inspiration by not pretending i’m above the mess. i let it get on me. i let it bother me. i let it teach me something. and then i write from there.
I find the story ideas come when I'm walking in the countryside (so I always carry a notebook) but never when taking a constitutional around the city streets where I live. The general lesson is that fresh vistas inspire, whereas over-familiar locations encourage us to think in stale ruts. (The trade-off is that city walks are good when you just want to iron out a nonfiction piece or a blog post. Of course, YMMV.)
My wife and I were talking the other day about one of my early arguments for getting away from a car-driven culture to a walking one when we moved from LA to London. I said we -- and everyone else we knew -- put our kid in a car, drove him from our house to preschool or wherever else he was going, and then just walked him in a door. He never experienced anything new, or at least rarely did. We just were at the few places he was safe. That's...not a way for a brain to grow. When we moved to London, he would stare at everything and ask endless questions. We were similarly transformed because every day was a new experience. Anyway, the point is: I agree. You need new experiences to inspire you. It happens in familiar surroundings, I think certainly when you've habitualized the space for such purposes, but getting out someplace new is always best.
I live in an urban environment and so have to purposefully look in the small details which can be so inspirational. I love the work of Lina on Substack who is all about the tiny details we so often miss
I like to spend purposeful time in my backyard or in the park with my notebook and special mechanical pencil. Creativity is all problem solving. The best method for inspiration is to ask yourself questions to find a specific story type. And impose limitations on your answers. Limits don’t confine—they define. Afterwards, cross out 9/10 of those ideas and do it all over again. This is my favorite technique to find ideas and figure out parts of story!
Try to keep up with the (objectively covered) news of the world, as well as the industry news of the cultural sector you want to document or enter. You will find a lot of material there.
I now that sounds odd, but I am constantly looking for connections, or at least my mind is, and that is where my inspiration comes from. I just finished writing a play about teenagers who get cloned after school shootings and how one of them has to choose between his friends and his father who runs a school security firm that profits indirectly form the shootings. I KNOW I stole that clone idea from somewhere, but I'll be buggered if I know where. The structure of the play -- minimal sets, only four characters, power players residing off stage, I stole that structure from the play Proof, which I saw a couple weeks ago, and used it to deliberately constrain myself so that the play would be more stage ready. Those two things -- mixing ideas and forcing constraints, seem to really open up the possibility of the work.
Along with mixing ideas, I keep an idea log. It's mostly just small short sentences ("Zombies taste of chicken!" an idea lifted form an Eddie Izzard concert ("babies taste of chicken!") and dissatisfaction at zombie movies (they are slow and stupid! We can avoid them!)) but they stuck and they give me a way to coral inspiration when I am looking for the next thing to write. I really do think that inspiration, at least for me, happens in both the collection of ideas and the process of turning them into stories. I have tried to make Zombies taste of chicken into a story several times and nothing worked -- the cloned school shooting story simply fell out really quickly. that is where inspiration comes in, I think.
I haven't seen that, but it wouldn't surprise me if some marketing or review material leaked not my brain. It's a pretty obvious idea, too, so I wouldn't be surprised of there are multiple pieces that have that as a component.
I've played around with a school shooting story once, too, but if I've seen/read that somewhere, I couldn't say. Weird. I do think connections are a big part of many artists' journeys, though, especially since autism is much more prevalent amongst artists. Pattern recognition is a big reason for that.
I didn't realize that autism was prevalent in creatives. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense.
As for the story, its one of the few that I kind of like at the end. I have a table reading for it in a couple weeks, so we will see. With respect to the cloning aspect, I suspect that some ideas are just of a time, and therefor the kind of float, as it were, in the ether and lots of folks pick them up.
I like to surround myself with things that remind me of the characters I am writing about. As to where these characters come from? Usually I think of them in the shower or on a long drive. Somewhere where my mind is shut off from all the chaos.
The shower is a safe space for creatives because we shut ourselves off from all distractions there except the warm water. As for surrounding yourself with things that remind you of your characters, I hope you don't write about crime.
I've often 'blamed' my lsck of inspiration on my Muse being busy off shopping or generally AWL. But more recently, with following the work of Lina on Substack, I'm seeing so much more and realise that when I'm open to ideas, the Muse is always with me.
Cole, you’ve asked a great question. I find it fulfilling to commune with spirits from the past. I often visit what feels like sacred ground, reflecting on my ancestors’ lives or simply being in nature where past peoples once were.
A profoundly significant experience occurred for me during my visit to South Carolina’s “The Old Slave Mart,” also referred to as “The Old Exchange.” This is an open-air market that served as an auction site for the enslaved.
During a work visit to the city, I was among a small group, with only two of us being African American. The meal we just had was one of the best I’ve ever eaten. The space immediately grabbed my attention as we wandered through the area. I had a feeling that something or someone was summoning me.
The moment I entered, an indescribable, soul-shaking sensation washed over me. A wave of sorrow hit me, and then a sense of awe took its place. A well-educated Black woman from the South, I stood in a place where individuals resembling me were once stripped of rights, voice, and humanity. Witnessing the monumental progress my generation is blessed with must fill them with immense pride.
When I’m stressed or think the world is at its worst, I’m always reminded of this specific moment. I am the result of their unbelievable sacrifice. I must uphold their legacy by always seeing the world as mine to explore and appreciate, even when things are insane.
So whenever I need inspiration, I take myself back to that moment, and instantly I’m inundated with fresh ideas and perspectives. I feel most grounded by that space and the spirits that remain there. Serving a similar purpose is the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. A site I think everyone in the country should visit at least once in their lifetime.
I have to lock this question down now, but two things: 1) Thank you so very much for sharing this story with us, truly. 2) If you make it to Detroit, I cannot recommend the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History more. It's a life-changing experience for any white boy of remotely decent heart (which I say from personal experience). You can stand inside parts of slave ships, which somehow manages to evoke a whisper of the real thing. Just enough to make you feel like the world is pressing down on your chest, piled like logs in a dark, dank space. That feel ultimately was reproduced -- and after a lot more research -- in a single chapter of my novel. That first visit to the museum teaches a lot about legacy and debt.
I think being comfortable with boredom is a skill all artists should foster. The need to produce can be counter-productive. But allowing yourself the space to not produce leads to so much in my experience. I love that you said "being silly". Thanks for sharing!
In general, I've struggled in recent years because I'm overwhelmed by my workload. As I've stepped back from a lot of that, I've found more space for creativity. That typically involves placing myself in safe environments to do that, from long walks in new spaces (very often green, but I love urban walks), hitting museums and other creative spaces where I can let my mind wander in space brimming with imagination, or just hanging out with other artists. But as much as all that, it's also about making myself experience works of art outside of my comfort zone. The more challenged I am, the more my creative muscle comes to life.
I find inspiration in current events. I read a lot of the old SciFi as a kid and really enjoy projecting trends out to a reductio ad absurdum resolution. I usually just Kilgore them. These kind of ideas are worth a short novella of pulp fiction, but nobody reads those any more. So I write microfiction. Sample:
*****
They brought the prisoner before the subterranean philosopher-king. His face was blank and expressionless; his features androgynous. Inside his augmented battle armor he was a ferocious sight. Outside he resembled nothing so much as an overlarge baby at the age before they develop control of their facial muscles. Uro, the king, had one of his soldiers drag in the faceplate of the armored suit to use as a translator, but stripped of all the semantic enhancement modules. The man's internal neuroboosters had been disabled as well. He could barely stand up without them.
"So, my honorable enemy, you stand before me, a caught by both your own chains and mine. You were powerful on the surface but now you are a prisoner in my world. Have you anything to say in your defense?"
The man looked around the room and blinked myopically once or twice. He seemed to be weighing up a deep thought, or maybe carefully phrasing his defiance. "I hafta pee," he said.
"You can not say I am an unfair ruler. Someone get this man a urinal so we can continue the interrogation. Your kind, sir, has embarked upon a course of extermination of my kind, at which you have been fairly successful. You have weapons we can not match, armor we can not breach, and faster reflexes than any human without augmentation can achieve. This is our first chance to interrogate one of our assailants and I assure you, we are agog to know why you have set yourselves upon this genocide."
Again the myopic blinks. "Need suit to think."
"You are never getting in that suit again. You are too dangerous in it. It is being destroyed as we speak. Long have we underneathers wanted to know the motivations of the surface dwellers. When the rift occurred between our peoples many years ago, we were still fundamentally respectful, even friendly toward each other. Then, a few months ago, your kind set out to eliminate my kind. Why was that, sir? Why?"
I call it "kilgoring" a story. What the hell, I like to verb words. If you haven't read Vonnegut, you might want to.
I tried Top Gun but didn't make it much past the credits. I very much have to be in the mood for that one. And for the record--this isn't a re-watch, it's a first watch. I managed to dodge it 'till this day.
I don't know why anyone would want to dodge that film. Except maybe victims of colonization, who sometimes can have very complicated feelings about it that I try to acknowledge and accept can live alongside other perspectives.
I had a lot more ideas when I was having a more tumultuous time last year. Now life is more peaceful I'm not having as many.
I read something that the poet Richard Siken wrote about why you might be more creatively inspired after a crisis, like after a break-up. He said because you get curious. Which makes sense. You're made to look at the world more carefully and try to understand it in a new way, because the old ideas you had no longer hold.
I think this is generally true for me, but I'd suggest a lot of that chaos is a lens issue. What do you let in? The world is filled with chaos, but how do you subjectively experience it? In my case, the immediately personal very rarely leads to bursts of creativity while deeply immersing myself in the glories and tragedies of the broader world do? So, while other people -- including artists -- tell me I let too much in, the consequence would be my creative process would suffer. Would that be better than carrying so much grief with me over the suffering I see? Probably. I don't know. I'm rambling right now, just thinking aloud...
i think inspiration is less something i “find” and more something i stop running from. when i was younger i thought it was supposed to feel like lightning. now it’s more like… noticing. paying attention to the stuff i usually bulldoze past. the weird thought i have while i’m wiping down a table at work. the way someone says something sideways and it sticks in my ribs. the moment i catch myself feeling too much and want to shut it down.
i don’t chase muses anymore. i just try to stay open long enough for something to land.
and honestly, half the time the thing that inspires me is the thing that annoys me. the thing i can’t let go of. the thing i wish i didn’t care about. that’s usually where the real writing is hiding.
so i guess my answer is: i foster inspiration by not pretending i’m above the mess. i let it get on me. i let it bother me. i let it teach me something. and then i write from there.
I truly appreciate this incredibly thoughtful response. It resonates with me, but I wouldn't have articulated my own experiences this way.
thank you cole i’m glad to hear it :)
What a wonderful explanation
I find the story ideas come when I'm walking in the countryside (so I always carry a notebook) but never when taking a constitutional around the city streets where I live. The general lesson is that fresh vistas inspire, whereas over-familiar locations encourage us to think in stale ruts. (The trade-off is that city walks are good when you just want to iron out a nonfiction piece or a blog post. Of course, YMMV.)
My wife and I were talking the other day about one of my early arguments for getting away from a car-driven culture to a walking one when we moved from LA to London. I said we -- and everyone else we knew -- put our kid in a car, drove him from our house to preschool or wherever else he was going, and then just walked him in a door. He never experienced anything new, or at least rarely did. We just were at the few places he was safe. That's...not a way for a brain to grow. When we moved to London, he would stare at everything and ask endless questions. We were similarly transformed because every day was a new experience. Anyway, the point is: I agree. You need new experiences to inspire you. It happens in familiar surroundings, I think certainly when you've habitualized the space for such purposes, but getting out someplace new is always best.
I live in an urban environment and so have to purposefully look in the small details which can be so inspirational. I love the work of Lina on Substack who is all about the tiny details we so often miss
I like to spend purposeful time in my backyard or in the park with my notebook and special mechanical pencil. Creativity is all problem solving. The best method for inspiration is to ask yourself questions to find a specific story type. And impose limitations on your answers. Limits don’t confine—they define. Afterwards, cross out 9/10 of those ideas and do it all over again. This is my favorite technique to find ideas and figure out parts of story!
Interesting technique. I've never heard anyone do something like this!
Try to keep up with the (objectively covered) news of the world, as well as the industry news of the cultural sector you want to document or enter. You will find a lot of material there.
Agreed.
I guess I just steal?
I now that sounds odd, but I am constantly looking for connections, or at least my mind is, and that is where my inspiration comes from. I just finished writing a play about teenagers who get cloned after school shootings and how one of them has to choose between his friends and his father who runs a school security firm that profits indirectly form the shootings. I KNOW I stole that clone idea from somewhere, but I'll be buggered if I know where. The structure of the play -- minimal sets, only four characters, power players residing off stage, I stole that structure from the play Proof, which I saw a couple weeks ago, and used it to deliberately constrain myself so that the play would be more stage ready. Those two things -- mixing ideas and forcing constraints, seem to really open up the possibility of the work.
Along with mixing ideas, I keep an idea log. It's mostly just small short sentences ("Zombies taste of chicken!" an idea lifted form an Eddie Izzard concert ("babies taste of chicken!") and dissatisfaction at zombie movies (they are slow and stupid! We can avoid them!)) but they stuck and they give me a way to coral inspiration when I am looking for the next thing to write. I really do think that inspiration, at least for me, happens in both the collection of ideas and the process of turning them into stories. I have tried to make Zombies taste of chicken into a story several times and nothing worked -- the cloned school shooting story simply fell out really quickly. that is where inspiration comes in, I think.
I think I saw that idea in the movie Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die!
I haven't seen that, but it wouldn't surprise me if some marketing or review material leaked not my brain. It's a pretty obvious idea, too, so I wouldn't be surprised of there are multiple pieces that have that as a component.
I've played around with a school shooting story once, too, but if I've seen/read that somewhere, I couldn't say. Weird. I do think connections are a big part of many artists' journeys, though, especially since autism is much more prevalent amongst artists. Pattern recognition is a big reason for that.
I didn't realize that autism was prevalent in creatives. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense.
As for the story, its one of the few that I kind of like at the end. I have a table reading for it in a couple weeks, so we will see. With respect to the cloning aspect, I suspect that some ideas are just of a time, and therefor the kind of float, as it were, in the ether and lots of folks pick them up.
I like to surround myself with things that remind me of the characters I am writing about. As to where these characters come from? Usually I think of them in the shower or on a long drive. Somewhere where my mind is shut off from all the chaos.
The shower is a safe space for creatives because we shut ourselves off from all distractions there except the warm water. As for surrounding yourself with things that remind you of your characters, I hope you don't write about crime.
I've often 'blamed' my lsck of inspiration on my Muse being busy off shopping or generally AWL. But more recently, with following the work of Lina on Substack, I'm seeing so much more and realise that when I'm open to ideas, the Muse is always with me.
Cole, you’ve asked a great question. I find it fulfilling to commune with spirits from the past. I often visit what feels like sacred ground, reflecting on my ancestors’ lives or simply being in nature where past peoples once were.
A profoundly significant experience occurred for me during my visit to South Carolina’s “The Old Slave Mart,” also referred to as “The Old Exchange.” This is an open-air market that served as an auction site for the enslaved.
During a work visit to the city, I was among a small group, with only two of us being African American. The meal we just had was one of the best I’ve ever eaten. The space immediately grabbed my attention as we wandered through the area. I had a feeling that something or someone was summoning me.
The moment I entered, an indescribable, soul-shaking sensation washed over me. A wave of sorrow hit me, and then a sense of awe took its place. A well-educated Black woman from the South, I stood in a place where individuals resembling me were once stripped of rights, voice, and humanity. Witnessing the monumental progress my generation is blessed with must fill them with immense pride.
When I’m stressed or think the world is at its worst, I’m always reminded of this specific moment. I am the result of their unbelievable sacrifice. I must uphold their legacy by always seeing the world as mine to explore and appreciate, even when things are insane.
So whenever I need inspiration, I take myself back to that moment, and instantly I’m inundated with fresh ideas and perspectives. I feel most grounded by that space and the spirits that remain there. Serving a similar purpose is the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. A site I think everyone in the country should visit at least once in their lifetime.
I have to lock this question down now, but two things: 1) Thank you so very much for sharing this story with us, truly. 2) If you make it to Detroit, I cannot recommend the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History more. It's a life-changing experience for any white boy of remotely decent heart (which I say from personal experience). You can stand inside parts of slave ships, which somehow manages to evoke a whisper of the real thing. Just enough to make you feel like the world is pressing down on your chest, piled like logs in a dark, dank space. That feel ultimately was reproduced -- and after a lot more research -- in a single chapter of my novel. That first visit to the museum teaches a lot about legacy and debt.
Being silly
Getting back to innate instincts and my “roots”
Silence and getting bored
My dog keeping the ball away from me
All these things + more
Good topic
I think being comfortable with boredom is a skill all artists should foster. The need to produce can be counter-productive. But allowing yourself the space to not produce leads to so much in my experience. I love that you said "being silly". Thanks for sharing!
By not trying to control it or what my output looks like. I just keep creating. How do you do it?
I'm writing about it every day here at 5AM StoryTalk. Talked about it a lot in this recent article: https://colehaddon.substack.com/p/creative-burnout-recovery-tips-writers
In general, I've struggled in recent years because I'm overwhelmed by my workload. As I've stepped back from a lot of that, I've found more space for creativity. That typically involves placing myself in safe environments to do that, from long walks in new spaces (very often green, but I love urban walks), hitting museums and other creative spaces where I can let my mind wander in space brimming with imagination, or just hanging out with other artists. But as much as all that, it's also about making myself experience works of art outside of my comfort zone. The more challenged I am, the more my creative muscle comes to life.
I find inspiration in current events. I read a lot of the old SciFi as a kid and really enjoy projecting trends out to a reductio ad absurdum resolution. I usually just Kilgore them. These kind of ideas are worth a short novella of pulp fiction, but nobody reads those any more. So I write microfiction. Sample:
*****
They brought the prisoner before the subterranean philosopher-king. His face was blank and expressionless; his features androgynous. Inside his augmented battle armor he was a ferocious sight. Outside he resembled nothing so much as an overlarge baby at the age before they develop control of their facial muscles. Uro, the king, had one of his soldiers drag in the faceplate of the armored suit to use as a translator, but stripped of all the semantic enhancement modules. The man's internal neuroboosters had been disabled as well. He could barely stand up without them.
"So, my honorable enemy, you stand before me, a caught by both your own chains and mine. You were powerful on the surface but now you are a prisoner in my world. Have you anything to say in your defense?"
The man looked around the room and blinked myopically once or twice. He seemed to be weighing up a deep thought, or maybe carefully phrasing his defiance. "I hafta pee," he said.
"You can not say I am an unfair ruler. Someone get this man a urinal so we can continue the interrogation. Your kind, sir, has embarked upon a course of extermination of my kind, at which you have been fairly successful. You have weapons we can not match, armor we can not breach, and faster reflexes than any human without augmentation can achieve. This is our first chance to interrogate one of our assailants and I assure you, we are agog to know why you have set yourselves upon this genocide."
Again the myopic blinks. "Need suit to think."
"You are never getting in that suit again. You are too dangerous in it. It is being destroyed as we speak. Long have we underneathers wanted to know the motivations of the surface dwellers. When the rift occurred between our peoples many years ago, we were still fundamentally respectful, even friendly toward each other. Then, a few months ago, your kind set out to eliminate my kind. Why was that, sir? Why?"
"I dunno. When food?"
I keep toying with the idea of microfiction myself. Maybe I'll have to give it a go, too!
I call it "kilgoring" a story. What the hell, I like to verb words. If you haven't read Vonnegut, you might want to.
I tried Top Gun but didn't make it much past the credits. I very much have to be in the mood for that one. And for the record--this isn't a re-watch, it's a first watch. I managed to dodge it 'till this day.
I don't know why anyone would want to dodge that film. Except maybe victims of colonization, who sometimes can have very complicated feelings about it that I try to acknowledge and accept can live alongside other perspectives.
I had a lot more ideas when I was having a more tumultuous time last year. Now life is more peaceful I'm not having as many.
I read something that the poet Richard Siken wrote about why you might be more creatively inspired after a crisis, like after a break-up. He said because you get curious. Which makes sense. You're made to look at the world more carefully and try to understand it in a new way, because the old ideas you had no longer hold.
I think this is generally true for me, but I'd suggest a lot of that chaos is a lens issue. What do you let in? The world is filled with chaos, but how do you subjectively experience it? In my case, the immediately personal very rarely leads to bursts of creativity while deeply immersing myself in the glories and tragedies of the broader world do? So, while other people -- including artists -- tell me I let too much in, the consequence would be my creative process would suffer. Would that be better than carrying so much grief with me over the suffering I see? Probably. I don't know. I'm rambling right now, just thinking aloud...