What is it? A lightning bolt out of the blue? An idea that stalks your brain, day-in, day-out? A nugget of gold, after sifting through sand and water, for years on end?
How do you define it? What does the word 'inspiration' mean to you?
I can tell you what it means to me.
It is the sunlight through the windows. It is the shadow that the dryer makes on the floor. It is the wrinkles in the bed that I am on. It is the fatigue in my legs, supporting my laptop. It is the words I am typing. It is the rust on the nails behind my grandmere's swinging gate.
It is everywhere. Just from those six ideas, I am already inspired - ten, twenty, thirty ideas, all swinging together and making twenty more. From those twenty, thirty. From those thirty, one hundred.
Example.
Shadows on the floor, shadow puppets, shadow puppets in the mirror glass, lines on the page, origami drawn flowers, watch the shadow on the mirror and copy it. Mirrors on the face, watch how people run. Hammer down the shadows on the floor, each wrinkle in the time; have an action performed at the beginning and link it up to the end, a wrinkle in time, a wrinkle in your time.
Easy.
Yeah, Studgeon's Law - 90% is crap, 10% creme de la creme. But if you can only generate 10 ideas, you'll only have one good one. If you can generate 100...voila! Voila!
Inspiration is everywhere.
And yet...you're stuck.
Bored.
Blocked.
Nothing comes to mind.
Why?
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Over the next few posts, I will teach you specific techniques that you can use in order to be more creative. Keep in mind, these are tools in a toolbox, not a philosophy - although you can make it so, if you want.
But first, the question: How does boredom and writer's block, all terrible, terrible things, breed creativity?
Simple.
