Inspiration

In search of a big idea

“The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.”

― Ernest Becker

I want an idea that leaves me dumb and breathless.

I want an idea that makes me foam at the mouth, that gives me a new disease, that tessellates my blood cells. I want a Big Idea. Something that fundamentally alters my perspective and perception, that transforms me into a new person.

There is no better feeling than inspiration. I can convince myself to become angry or sad on a whim, but inspiration only comes when it wants to. It is something that seems to arise from divine providence, like sitting on the lip of a deep trench and watching for a white bird to soar out of the dark. I don't feel like inspiration is born out of my nerves and blood - it is something outside of myself, something that passes through me, like I am the vessel it needs to command. I can never own it, because it is everything.

I've spent a long time trying to find the right conditions for inviting inspiration. It cannot be whipped into shape. It can't be wrestled out through willpower and gritted teeth, through cold showers and 4:45 A.M. wake up calls. Inspiration must be treated with respect. It is wild and beautiful, warm and vivid. It is more like an intelligent wild animal than an emotion. If you want inspiration you must build it an inviting place to spend the night. You must be focused, but not strained. Disciplined, but relaxed. It often comes while walking or in the shower, when your mind is allowed to unanchor itself from your actions and move more freely about. But that's only if I've done the necessary work - set the preconditions of the inspiration with questions and soft intentions. It is a balancing act. It is work without working. It is learning how to be quiet and to quell the anxiety that wants to build inside of you when the inspiration doesn't come fast enough. It always comes. People say the muse is unreliable, but she is also unrelenting. If you learn her rules, she won't fail you.

You don't need to be an oracle who inhales gas from a rock to find inspiration. You don't need to starve like Lord Byron or deprive yourself of sleep like Edison. You don’t have to inhale the scent of rotting apples like Friedrich Schille or sharpen a row of pencils like Steinbeck. You don't need to make a deal with a demon, abandon your friends and family, or become something inhuman. You don’t need to dabble in the occult, visit a fortune teller, find God, drink whiskey until your liver becomes diseased, live in poverty and filth,

All you have to do is be steadfast and patient and orient your eyes toward the dream that you are seeking.

So why don’t I feel inspired?

It's ’s been a while since I've truly felt inspired, in the way that blows my head off my neck, makes me feel like I’ve rearranged my DNA. Inspiration is what makes life worth living to me. It's a peek behind the veil, into the celestial machinery. It's a moment when I am more than myself, and the loneliness of being a self lifts away.

I’ve got a litany of excuses for why that is. For one, I'm about 90% finished with my next novel, and after three years and seven drafts there are no new Big Ideas. The last part of finishing a book is always a bit of a grind. It's grunt work. It's taking those ideas you've already assembled and hammering them out, refining them. This is often when people stop writing, because the thrill Is gone. You're sick to death of the story that once breathed new life into you, hot enough to boil, and you just want to move on so you can feel that sensation again.

But that can’t be the only reason. After all, even when I’m 90% finished with a novel I’m usually kicking around a new idea, a short story, a newsletter. I’m finding fantastical ideas in the crevices of the shower, in the bloom of flowers that look in the right light like the faces of happy children. They come to me unbidden, whether I want them to or not, and I have to gently tell them: Not now. I’m busy. Until I’m finished with this work I can’t be beholden to a new idea that threatens to overwhelm me with its new romance.

I could tell myself I'm not inspired because I have a toddler. This is a fantastic excuse, and one used by many, as to why they can no longer be creative. Gone are my peaceful mornings in my office underneath the night sky bleeding out, the moon turning into paper before it disappears. Gone are my contemplative, frenzied nights when I can crack open a Red Bull and pour myself a shot of vodka and return to the page like it’s a rabid dog I’m going to sink my teeth into. I can’t whittle away hours in a darkened room in the middle of the day, head unhooked like a black balloon, floating away in the turgid murk of an idea. I can only write in stolen moments, between naps and little transitions, at the gym between sets. I am trying to keep alive a child who needs constant nurturing and attention, who cares nothing for the silly little artistic pretensions, my novel, my Big Ideas. She is bred of blood and milk, a grasping machine slowly being formed into consciousness. Her body is still hooked to nature and its involuntary animal ways. She needs movement and sunlight and noise. She is a Big Idea.

And maybe it's because I've slowly lost my desire to be a successful writer. When I was younger being a successful, famous, well read writer mattered to me more than anything. Now, I want to keep writing because I love to create stories, and to feel plugged into the flow of a dream, and to work at a craft that is so demanding that it requires all of my knowledge and attention. But I've seen what some of my peers have had to do to become successful, and how little they've gained for it. (Sometimes they even pay for it.) Recognition and money is never as satisfying as you think it's going to be, and I've seen writers trapped in a cycle of fear and anxiety because they need their books to keep selling well in order to survive. I don't crave validation as much as I used to, because the validation of strangers is hollow. I know. I've demanded it enough, gotten it enough, to realize that. And that realization has made me take a slower, more relaxed approach to my work. I'm no longer pushing myself to get up and write in the middle of the night because I'm burning with the terror that unless I publish I will die under the crushing weight of irrelevance. I no longer have the ambition of a girl who is bitter and boiling with envy, with rage, with the poisoning of trauma.

I no longer write like I am trying to lift a curse. Is that good for my mental health and well being? Yeah. Is it good for my inspiration? I'm not sure.

And I can say I don’t feel inspired because of my life circumstances. I took my child out of daycare back in December because I learned she was crying herself to sleep every day. Some of my family has been having issues with their health. My husband has been out of a job for 5 months and only recently got a new one. It's been too cold to play outside or go on my little hot girl walks. I've stopped going out on fun outings or doing my nails because I can’t really afford it. I've gained 5 lbs. I wear sweatpants most days. I've always been inclined toward melancholy and I'll look for any reason to be sad. I go through this little moody cycle every year or so before I decide to pick up my good habits again. Life has a way of trying to destroy you. If you don’t approach it correctly, it can sour you like vinegar, or grind all your hard edges until you become passive and useless. Inspiration requires a kind of lightness of being, and a kind of intensity too. It’s a stormy hopefulness, a movement forward, a delicate beauty. The mundane stress of life doesn’t appreciate inspiration.

But none of these are the real reasons.

I’m afraid.

I was lying when I said I wanted to be inspired. I don't want to be inspired in the way broken people don't want to fall in love. I am the would-be suitor who stands in the dark outside the golden ballroom, wincing at the glittering sparks that glint off the costumes of the beautiful people inside. I am afraid to go inside. I am afraid to become besotted by an idea and experience the crush of uncertainty.

Where has my courage gone?

I recently read a post on X that said if people “pluck up their courage” that insinuates it grows from the ground like flowers.

Maybe it really is as simple as that.

All I have to do is look down and it’ll be waiting at my feet.