Inspiration is like magic

Is inspiration so ethereal that it can run away from you?

I am worried that inspiration whisks away in the time I take to grab hold of an idea. I have been reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. She believes firmly that you have to open yourself to creativity and grab inspiration when it strikes.

I have written before how I think inspiration is everywhere. In fact it is very easy for me to get caught in a new idea. I have tried and tested ways of getting them down into snippets, sometimes if it is a character, I may write them a short story. And if I feel stuck, I just look around and start writing about what I see. That may not be a very inspired practice but I tend to find that as I start to write what I see, my imagination will follow. She will tell me what a character might do in a circumstance or ask me to see how I feel in that moment, so that I flit into a different perspective.

But Elizabeth Gilbert doesn’t just tell us to be open to pure inspiration, she tells us to be ready. She tells us to work at them. She concedes you need many things to be ready. A sense of artistic entitlement that you absolutely have permission to be creative. A practice of working with what life throws at you, rather than resist it. As the quote below explains, ideas are out there, they are…

energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Big Magic is a very inspiring thesis to read. It tells you to get on with it. And if we follow the logic of her idea: the Universe wants me to know this right now. Our lessons, inspiration, come along at the right moment and are they are there to help us. And so this book coming along and telling me to grab the ideas because they will spring away is exactly what I need to hear.

It is also terrifying! My time is limited, my energy levels are pretty low as I have explained. What do I do if these ideas float through the window and I am distracted or napping?

I think sometimes it might be about letting something go. An idea that has gone stale will get lost in a quagmire. As she says, “Done is better than good.” She reminds us we have to practice and sometimes we have to let it go. Kill your darlings, know what is still fresh and get on with it.

I have found her book a really good boost to my writing though I haven’t been able to do much. I like how she too is fascinated by creativity and where it springs from.

Have you developed your creativity based on Big Magic?

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