Inspiration, where does it come from and can I get me some?

In my writer’s block blogs I managed to palm off the question of inspiration with the vague promise of future exploration. Alas my wife has been reminding me and so the time has come. It strikes me as wholly ironic that at this point I’m staring at the screen feeling somewhat lost.

I asked my wife, a hugely creative person who has 500 ideas a minute, where she got her inspiration from. For her, the following works well.

She will begin with a vague feeling about something, whether she’s writing a speech or creating some marketing. Often very vague, but what she will do is get excited about the prospect of the creation, without yet any clear idea of what it is. She will also try to figure out what is important to her about whatever it is that she is trying to create. She would describe this as being on a ‘values level’, meaning which of her core values, the things that inform the way she lives her life, does it really resonate with. Then, she will do something entirely unconnected with it, something that occupies her conscious brain. This gives her unconscious brain time to work on it and come up with something. When she then sits down to create, the answers and inspiration are there waiting.

So, that’s how I find my inspiration. Heheheh, see what I did there? Saved for another day.