The work brings the inspiration

Ideas find you when you make space to take them seriously

A few months ago, I interviewed novelist Camille Pagán for my Before Breakfast podcast. Pagán has written a lot of books. She also coaches other writers. She tells them that one of the most important things they can do is to set aside a regular time for their writing. It doesn’t have to be much. But it has to be regular, and it has to be something.

Here’s why. If you set aside 6-6:45 a.m. most weekday mornings for writing, your brain starts to think of this as creative time. It starts to come up with ideas, knowing you have that time to take them seriously, and to execute on them. Your brain builds the habit. Whereas if you wait for inspiration, inspiration may be a long time in coming. The work brings the inspiration, not the other way around.

You come up with something

I think this is great advice. For the past 2-plus years, I’ve been writing a sonnet a week at a pace of 2 lines per day. I don’t always know what I’m going to write when I sit down to create those lines of poetry. But because I’ve been doing this so regularly, when I sit down to write I always come up with something. Some stuff is better than other stuff, but the work brings the inspiration.

You might find the same thing. If you carve out 30 minutes at night most days for your drawing, you might not always know what you’re going to work on, but when you get to those 30 minutes you’ll do something. The regular practice means you’ll create more art, and thus create better art, than if you hadn’t had this practice.

Time for experimentation

Choreographer Twyla Tharp wrote a whole book called The Creative Habit, in which she talks about just this. She’d spend time frequently just trying out movements. As she got older, she hired dancers to try out her physical ideas. But she still built in regular time for this creative experimentation.

Now, people like Tharp and Pagán do creative work for a living, so they can usually carve out more time than people with day jobs. But a lot of Pagán’s clients have day jobs. So they look at their schedules and see what can work. For many busy people with jobs and families, it’s going to be time in the morning. If you’re a night owl, it can be time at night. Some people make do with sessions on each of the weekend days. A little bit of time Friday night, Saturday morning and Sunday morning can work. Three times a week is a habit.

But don’t tell yourself you’ll do creative work when you come up with a good idea. Good ideas find you when you’ve built in space to do creative work. We often think of this as happening in another direction, but it isn’t true. The work creates the inspiration. So, best to do the work.