How to Find That Sweet, Sweet Creative Inspiration
25 filmmakers, authors, and comic book writers from around the globe weigh in about how they conjure the ideas, passion, and drive that fuels their artistic lives
“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” - Pablo Picasso
I’ve always like this quote, even though I don’t necessarily agree with it. I also like this one:
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” - Jack London
That’s more like it, at least in my case.
In both examples I’ve provided, the artist is expected to be active in their pursuits, whether that’s study and practice as Picasso suggested or going in a kind of aggressive search for it. Muses are not part of their equation. Those who wait around for them are, as Stephen King has suggested, amateurs…
…but wait a minute, is that true?
Lately, I’ve been thinking about inspiration in general. How it works for myself, how it works for others. This March, I decided to explore it with the help of some friends old and new. Twenty-five of them, in fact, all of them professional professional filmmakers, novelists, and comic book writers/artists. This is the specific question I posed to them:
Creative inspiration can be elusive for some. Can you discuss how you find it, from where you go to leave yourself open to it, to the tools you’ve developed to be ready for and foster it in your work?
Below, you will find the responses I received. In addition to the variety of mediums these artists work in, they represent a diverse range of voices and cultural backgrounds from across the globe - including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Some are inspirational in and of themselves, some are practical, some are brutally pragmatic. Hopefully, their perspectives and experiences will be of some help to you wherever you are on your creative journey.
KAYLA ALPERT (screenwriter/executive producer, “WEDNESDAY”)
Inspiration is lot like a house cat. You can’t summon it by name. It just comes to you when it wants to. I will say that the very last place I get inspiration is by staring at a blank screen on my computer - despite forcing myself to do this for, oh, thirty years. While I don’t always write “autobiographical” scripts, I often cannibalize stories from my friends and family. And I often also ask myself: what am I fascinated by right now? What news article, Facebook post, Instagram reel, fond (or not so fond) memory, annoying neighbor or weird experience is living in my head rent-free - and that can get my mind churning. Not everything is meant to be a movie or tv series — nor does" “inspiration” always come in an obvious package— but if you can recognize the raw form and dig into your imagination, you might just find something there.
Kayla is a U.S.-based screenwriter.
MICHAEL BRANDT (creator/showrunner, “CHICAGO FIRE”)
For me, inspiration comes from finding a moment. As a visual medium person, I’m forever ingrained with the moments from movies and shows where the character had a realization or made a choice, the music swelled, and I leaned forward. I can think all day about a concept or a even a story and have it never land, but when I find that moment in the story I am inspired. From there, I start building the story to get to that moment and rarely waiver from it, relying on the emotional feeling I first had to be the cornerstone, and counting on the audience feeling the same way.
I put a lot of faith in my instinct, but that wasn’t always the case. Early on, concept seemed to rule the day — and still does in much of the business of getting things made — but as I become more seasoned, concept becomes less interesting and actually stifles my inspiration. In fact, I find myself typing — not writing — to service only that. Typing is work, and I’m certainly not inspired to work! Moments are built out of magic and wonder, or development and change, where concept is built from sales and marketing. Concept elicits, “Oh that’s a good idea…” But then what? I become inspired when I figure out a way to guide a story toward a moment and then actually earn it. That’s when typing becomes writing, which is a passionate undertaking, and inspiration naturally follows.
Michael is a U.S.-based filmmaker.
DARICK ROBERTSON (co-creator/artist, THE BOYS comic book)
I guess I'm kind of a hungry dog of creativity in that I don't really pick and choose where my inspiration comes from, I take it where I find it. I have to shut it down most of the time, as my entire life, I've been a victim of daydreaming and distraction from it. I can't hold onto an idea hard enough before another has flooded in and washed the previous one away, if I haven't written it down. When inspiration hits while driving and such, that can be frustrating, as my mental retention isn't as reliable as it once was. I find inspiration everywhere. As I've moved further into my writing, moreover than my artwork, I'm finding drawing more aggravating and limiting and a certain freedom in being able to describe my visions and concepts as opposed to illustrating them.
I love music and sound and words create that wave of illustration. (I recently heard Alison Moyet describe creating music in a studio as “painting with sounds” and I found that profound.) As far as tools I've developed, I lean into meditation and have had enormous luck fetching things from sleeping dreams, a technique I've heard David Lynch (who wrote a book on the topic) describe it as “catching the big fish”. As I fall asleep or as I'm waking up, I will use that in-between state where I am completely, physically still to ponder where my story will go next or on what I've created so far.
For artwork, I will sometimes lay out a story page in my mind and see it finished in my mind, but I find this harder to retain by the time I get to my drawing materials. So if I'm lost for an idea, sometimes I'll try to let my hand move on its own, and capture the essence of what I'm imagining in order to find my way to a cohesive image - by allowing rather than pushing. I try to remember that creating was originally a form of play, escape and fun for me, and try to shed and disperse the feeling of pressure and self-criticism.
Darick is a U.S.-based comic book artist.
MEREDITH GLYNN (screenwriter/executive producer, “THE BOYS” TV series)
This is a really great question, and I'm eager to read what others say! Because for me, there is no real routine or toolkit. I go through electric bouts of inspiration and then chasms of...nothing. Peaks and valleys. Strikes and gutters. Yada yada. One thing I have learned to do is to be kind to myself during the dry spells. A pal dubbed them “inhalation periods”, and I always loved that way of looking at it; just because you're not feeling inspired to be productive and/or generative doesn't mean you're not passively building the groundwork for something great. During those more fallow periods, I tend to watch and re-watch more movies, read the various unread books I've accumulated on the ’ole bedside table, seek out new music, walk around the city, watch my kids sleep, and let my mind wander. Daydream. Cogitate. Inhale. It's incredible what your mind comes up with when you take the pressure to grind it out on the page off (but only temporarily - got to get it on the page sometimes!).
Meredith is a U.S.-based screenwriter.
ELLIOT PERLMAN (author, THE STREET SWEEPER)
Inspiration is the fun part, the easy part, the part where everything seems possible. It might be that it’s this way because one doesn’t have to work at this part of the process, it either arrives smiling as it pounds on the door to your consciousness, or it doesn’t. Not only that, but at the “inspiration” stage that thought which makes you excited to create something doesn’t have to be perfect and you don’t need to know entirely (or even at all) what to do with it. It can be a character idea, a plot idea, a snatch of overheard — even misheard — conversation, the strained remnants of a dream, or a juxtaposition of ideas. And you can get any of that from anywhere; reading a newspaper article, talking to a friend, reading any of your favorite writers, be they prose writers of novels, short stories, or playwrights, poets, screenwriters, or songwriters.
So, if inspiration doesn’t need to be “worked for”, does that mean that you don’t need to do anything to hasten its arrival? Certainly, there can be many times in a writer’s life where inspiration arrives at an unwelcome time where, left to the ordinary rhythms of your daily life, it would otherwise slip through your fingers like quicksilver. In such cases the test of just how much a fallen windswept leaf-like thought inspired you can be measured in some inexact, unscientific way by the lengths to which you’ll go to save it, to record it. Will you get out of bed in the middle of the night and walk down the hall to another room in order to record it? (Here comes a possibly unpopular even counter-intuitive piece of advice: Don’t keep the means of recording ideas next to your bed. Why not? The test of the power on you of this floating inchoate thought will be the lengths you’ll go to trap its effect on you to the best of your ability. Will you get out of the shower? Will you incur the wrath of your loved ones by getting down with the idea at a time when they’re screaming for your attention?)
But there are times when you’re in the middle of a creative task, perhaps one with a deadline, and mood, weather, health, hunger, external circumstances beyond your control, dislike of the task, or feelings of hopelessness can rob you of the inspiration you need to solve your problem or even to face it. What do you do then? A walk or some other physical exercise can help, a change of scene, even briefly, a nap, a conversation with someone warm, not necessarily about the topic you’re struggling with - all of these might help. What if you can’t find a sufficiently warm person? What if at the precise moment you need one you can’t even think of one? That’s a dark moment to be sure, and we all have them. Most writers have too many of them.
What do I do in the darkest times? I can often find myself turning or returning to a work or a writer that’s really important to me, something or someone that made me want to write in the first place. It doesn’t even have to be in the fields that I’m straining to plough. And then I try to imagine a time before that work existed, to remember how grateful I am that it exists, and to imagine that some human had to struggle with things, possibly things I don’t know about, in order to bring about the work that’s so dear to me. Maybe someone you don’t know needs you to finish what you’re working on. You don’t know. You might never know. And there’s a certain beauty in that.
Elliot is an Australia-based author and screenwriter.
MARC GUGGENHEIM (creator/showrunner, “DC’S LEGENDS OF TOMORROW”)
I’m a sucker for competency porn. I draw inspiration from artists — or any stripe — working at the height of their powers. Those can be visual artists, musicians, chefs, athletes, etcetera. I get inspired by people playing at the top of their game. But, being a writer, I draw the most inspiration from other writers, so watching TV shows and movies are near the top of my list when I’m looking for inspiration. But reading books and screenplays is at the very top. Good writing makes me want to write good. Er, well.
But probably the most important thing is that I try to resist the temptation to force inspiration. I think the best way to open yourself up to inspiration is not to try. Accept the fact that in the life of a creative, you’re going to go through periods where you’re inspired, where you’re open to inspiration, and periods where nothing is happening. And that’s okay. Those fallow periods pass with time. Know that and trust that.
Marc is a U.S.-based screenwriter, comic book writer, and novelist. I encourage you to subscribe to his Substack LegalDispatch. You can read my artist-on-artist interview with him here.
ROSEANNE LIANG (creator/director, “CREAMERIE”)
I’ve discovered that inspiration definitely doesn’t come when I’m in the desperate clench of trying to find inspiration. It seems to visit in the more relaxed in-between - walks, silences, showers, sitting on the toilet. This feels super common in writer’s rooms - you might have spent hours locked in with no solutions, then someone gets up for a wee and comes back with “I’ve got it!”. We call it the Toilet Fairy.
Ideation-wise, I once had the good fortune to emcee a Q&A with James Cameron. His advice for filmmakers is to explore all things other than film - engineering, architecture, biology, history. I love the simplicity of this advice, and agree it can lead to a freshness of perspective in an otherwise repetitive and self-referential space. I think genuine curiosity is helpful. And I don’t just mean for the big questions of our world - it could be curiosity in the geometry of knitting, or niches of human behavior.
Once the spark of inspiration has been lit, I notice my mind working on an idea even when I’m not “on”. Once again, it’s in the liminal spaces — preparing dinner, half-watching TV, the minutes before sleep — I’ll just find myself thinking about it. That’s when I know it’s something that might have longevity; something I can get my teeth into.
I don’t think it’s responsible to talk about the birth of ideas without touching on the possible death of them, too. Sometimes, even when I’ve found inspiration and developed and fostered something for years, the spark can die. This has happened more times than I want to admit, and what hurts most is that it’s often for the best - i.e., it’s not the right time, or there are better things out there that are just like it. I try to remind myself that nothing has been wasted because the work is its own reward. Easy to say, of course!
Roseanne is a New Zealand-based filmmaker.
LUKE JENNINGS (author, the KILLING EVE book series)
For me, there are two things that have to come together for me to launch into a new novel. The first is that the idea resonates with me — that thump of recognition, hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck thing that says yes — and the second is the sense that I'm not alone in wanting this story to be written. That others are waiting to read it, whether they know it or not.
For years, I made the mistake of thinking that the first was enough. That “I want to write about this” constituted some sort of imperative that publishers and editors and readers would respond to. Today, my toes curl at my naïveté. In truth, I was longing for guidance. Because yes, I wanted to write about certain things and people and situations, but I didn't know how to order this want. I didn't know how to step back from an idea and assess if it had any kind of universal currency, or was just my own personal, I don't know, weirdness. Fiction's a two way thing; there's no point broadcasting if no one's set to receive.
These days, when a random comment or headline or image sets off that familiar synaptic flash, I stress-test the idea. If I go down this rabbit hole, will others follow? Or will I just be burrowing deeper into the recycling bin of my own preoccupations? You can tell, pretty clearly, when an author's done this. Undertaken the passion project that no one asked for, or wanted to read. I think I now understand what E.M. Forster meant by “only connect.” It's a simple idea, but putting it into practice entails a shedding of arrogance and a humility that doesn't necessarily sit easily with the self-styled “creative artist”. But then I don't think of myself as any kind of artist. It's just not helpful, nor is the idea of “inspiration”, which characterizes the author as some kind of supernaturally attuned mage. I've found that if you shed all that grandiose crap and take every opportunity to talk and listen to people — what they care about, dream of, and fear — the ideas will come.
Luke is a U.K.-based author and journalist. I encourage you to subscribe to his Substack
.