The Quest for Inspiration

I notice over on her blog, Cat Treadwell is pondering inspiration – http://druidcat.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/the-joy-of-inspiration/. Here I am, dog tired, with a ton of things I need to be doing, struggling to get together a blog post. Yesterday there just wasn’t time. I try to blog every day because I think it is important to write every day. It’s like flexing more physical muscles, and keeping in the habit, helps. Making the effort to find a good idea and write about it, keeps my brain clunking along. This is rather a ‘cheat’ blog, because the reason for writing it is actually how short of inspiration I am.

Much of my mental energy at the moment is being diverted into getting the stuff from the boat to the flat – and all attendant stuff sorting. Quite a lot of my mind is occupied with trying to wrestle the Canal & River Trust into acting more decently. I am making progress, they want an in person meeting, but I am sore pressed for time. However, other boaters can and will go in my stead, so I may be able to pass the baton there. All well and good, but between the two, energy for wordy creativity on the blog is not what it could be. I’m so worn that finding the energy to work on typing up the current book (first draft was on paper) is an effort. So much for this being the high energy time of the year.

I have a good relationship with the awen most of the time. If I seek inspiration, it comes, and I do something – be that a poem, a blog, a blanket or an innovative meal. I don’t generally suffer from a shortage of ideas. Often the bigger issue for me is picking through the rush of possibilities to find things, or combinations of things, that will work. There are days when that just doesn’t happen, and this is one of them. I know what the problem is – if I try and run to hard and too long without resting, I lose the ability to manage the idea flow. If I do not nurture myself with good input, that also doesn’t help. I need more rest time, and more absorption time. I have been reading Jonathan Green’s excellent Pax Britannia books, and have read Craig Hallam’s Greaveburn and Meg Kingston’s Chrystal Heart, which have all helped keep me going. Tonight I shall curl up with Genevieve Tudor’s wonderful folk program (google it, you can listen online). Tomorrow, back into the maelstrom no doubt. In fact, this afternoon I have to get back under a bed to tackle the things that dare to dwell in such places… may the gods have mercy on me.

It’s not difficult to get ideas for books, or blogs or anything else you might want to do creatively. The world is full of ideas, old and new. The trick is having the peace of mind to be able to encounter those and reflect on them, the skill to separate good ones from useless ones, and the wherewithal to then turn that idea into a thing. And lo, I find myself somewhere over my target minimal word count, and possessed of a blog after all. Inspiration, it’s often just a case of doing the work and a lot less mysterious than it seems.