Hobbies:
Inspiration isn't flashy
Inspiration is humble.
You forever chase it for your next project -to ink your next piece of writing, to capture the immaterial in art, and to paint something that stands above the landfill of AI junk out there.
But inspiration keeps to herself, missed when you need her the most. She is like an old lady with too much time on her hands, lost, but never lost, as she explores every square and avenue of the town.
This old lady will teach us a lesson later.
I’ll come at it from a writer’s perspective, but if your main discipline lies elsewhere, then this issue will apply to that too -generally speaking. The eternal headache of “writers block” follows, wherever you take your pen, and it has an ugly face for whatever craft it chooses to harass that day. Nobody is safe.
There’s a boatload of advice that points new writers to fresh springs of inspiration -some good, some bad. I want to focus on one misconception I see pop up that bugs me every time, one that can feel like a knife in the gut for a new writer, afraid of the road ahead:
“Inspiration comes from adventure.”
Ok, nobody said exactly that. I may as well be fighting a ghost.
But even then, it’s easy to nod at this phrase and file it away as another truism in your mind: inspiration follows when you chase it in a grand adventure, when you live a great and colourful life.
It’s hard to hear, because most of us don’t. We’re not main characters, as much as Tiktok zoomers like to insist. Ordinary jobs, ordinary lives, ordinary skills -what is there to write about? What can inspire anything we create if the highlight of this month was a tax return?
Fair point. I’d hate for you to think this piece is a cry against adventure and exploration. We should celebrate an exciting life, one full of triumph, struggle and standards for something greater. What’s not to love? And besides, it’s much easier to create something unique when your life- your canvas -is already exciting.
BUT.
And it’s a big but:
This is not etched into stone. It’s only half the story.
You don’t need to live an outwardly exciting life for great inspiration to arise.
Inspiration can also come from within, when you apply grandeur to the ordinary. Through this, you elevate what already exists rather than seeking something which is a spectacle in itself.
An influencer with a video budget of a million dollars can control the weather, fix the sun in place and create all the emotion he wants -but what of the teenager in their bedroom? They have to take the ordinary- the experiences they have lived -and give them a meaning that will make people listen.
Or think of a pharmacy cologne -a cheap, synthetic, mass-produced type you get gifted for Christmas after your aunt saw the tacky adverts. Nothing special, right? Maybe, unless it was the scent your father wore every day for work. Maybe he’s no longer around, and catching the smell in the air invites a surge of memories from your childhood, as he span you through the air or acted as a final boss in a garden water fight. The ordinary became profound -all in a $20 bottle of perfume.
If you struggle with inspiration, it’s time to look at the humble details of everyday life more closely. It’s all already there -nothing’s changed. Are you receptive to it? Do you notice these small stories that unfold everywhere?
It’s not a switch you can flick on, but a slow, gentle habit that takes time to develop -the so-called artist’s eye.
I write in a flowery tone, but I like to end these with some concrete practical advice -how can you find inspiration in the humble, in real life?
An easy starting point is to write notes on what you observe. I know, I know. I can hear your eyes rolling from here. More notes? Thankfully, for once, these are as rough as it gets, and demand very little excess effort. In Storyworthy, by Matthew Dicks, he suggests that we capture odd or interesting moments out of our day -the types that stand out juuust a little more than usual, or heck, not at all.
It could be her -the old lady from before. She’s nothing special. She minds her business, browses the flower stands and pets the black cat that guards your street all day. It’s you who stops to look, to listen, and to imagine who this woman is. That could be the story of your day.
These can be a page long, or a single sentence -that’s for you to decide. What matters is that you perceived it and wrote it down -the writing itself isn’t the focus, and you can keep it as rough around the edges as you wish. Over time, this habit can become redundant as you train yourself to spot these moments, enough that you brand them into your mind. This catalogue of quirky experiences comes to inspire your next work, or it doesn’t, and you lose nothing.
To push this idea beyond the realm of writing, you can change the medium to fit you. As an artist, you’ll make sketches of strangers to better understand them. As a designer, you can rebrand the pack of chocolate you saw on a billboard yesterday. A game developer- lucky them -should enjoy a variety of videogames and jot down the most fun elements of each. All share that same uniting thread: perception of the subtle details.
Inspiration is humble, inspiration is shy. You have to invite her into the conversation.
Yours,
Odysseas