Preparing for Inspiration

Steven Pressfield tells artists that we tap into the divine when we put our butt in the chair. The Muse visits us and inspiration strikes precisely at 7:30am sharp, after brewing coffee and showering, once we sit down to type.

Pressfield's wisdom—elegantly articulated in both The War of Art and my favorite, Turning Pro—is counterintuitive and provocative. Can we really just manifest things? Is it so simple to manufacture inspiration?

I recently got into an argument with a musician. I said something like, "regularly sitting down to write is how one gets inspired." He replied, "I disagree. I'd say listening is very important. I get struck by ideas for songs out of the blue. This is only possible by being present and attuned to the world around me."

Someone else came to my defense, pointing out this musician had a finely honed ear. So it turns out we were both right!

He has many years of experience crafting one or more songs every single day. Because his creative practice is so developed, he registers song ideas more readily. His brain has been trained to constantly turn the world around him into song.

When I'm blogging regularly, I find random conversations like this one hit me as "that would make a great blog post." The practice of writing primes me for greater awareness in my day-to-day. It's magic, and Seth Godin already wrote the playbook for us.

If you force yourself to write a poem (or a piece of software) every day, inspiration finds you sooner than you'd think.

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Thanks to Adam James and Soul for inspiring this post and reviewing an initial draft.