How to Find the Inspiration to Write When Nothing’s Inspiring Enough

Clue: there’s always something to write about

If you’ve ever driven abroad, you’re probably familiar with the following scenario. You pick up your rental car from the airport and off you go to your destination. If you live in Britain, like me, or in a place where they drive on the left, you will also have to pay attention to what side of the road you’re on.

At some point, you will have to leave the motorway and turn off at a junction. However, despite your best efforts, you will either take the wrong turning or miss it altogether and stay on the (now renamed “bloody motorway”) until the next exit or roundabout.

Despite the existence of built-in Google maps on smartphones or, failing that, the more humble real ones (you know, the maps that open up into A1 size, or bigger), the situation I described before is all too common. Getting lost (or as I’ve come to relabel it, “discovering new places”) is a pickle we all get into very often.

The writer suffers from a similar syndrome. We psyche ourselves up, get our utensils ready (paper and pen, or laptop and cup of preferred beverage), sit in our favorite chair, and put on our most loved CD (nothing too distracting. You see, we’re in the process of creating something “big” here, right?).

But nothing comes.

An hour after, the blank page is only that: a blank page. For sixty minutes we’ve failed to leave our mark in the world (OK, that sounds a bit too grandstanding. We’ve failed to leave our mark on the page). Our mind is as empty as space we stare at. Someone might joke that this is exactly the state of meditation most practitioners strive towards, and yet, here we are, perplexed and frustrated.

This is what writers call “writer’s block”. To which I say: “What a load of bollocks!”

Beam me up, Scotty

First things first. That we are capable of suffering from a block of sorts is not to be sniffed at. After all, as human beings, we are all affected by mental obstacles every now and then. These can come about as a result of social and emotional factors: anxiety, pressure, or depression, to name but three.

I would however dispute that the kind of mental obstruction that befalls creative types is rooted in a word deficit. For me, it’s the opposite. We have words galore. They inhabit every part of our being, come out of every pore, every orifice.

The issue is how to arrange them. You need to be transported back to the land of order. It’s not easy to get there, though. It’s important that you develop strategies and techniques to manoeuvre your return to “Inspiration Country”.

Remember: you always have a topic to write about. But you might not always know how to do it.

Creativity is a cycle. We’re suddenly struck with an idea and we feel an urgency to do something with it. How we approach this process depends on our skills. A musician will compose a score, whilst a writer will compose a paragraph. The end product will be different in form, but equal in content. Both musicians and writers have left a part of themselves on the score/page.

What happens, then, when we have a multitude of ideas swarming our heads? We can’t get started. We stare at the blank page and the blank page stares back at us defiantly. But this battle is not the result of a dearth of ideas or words, but an abundance of them. That’s when the cycle hits what appears to be a cul-de-sac.

Many years ago, I worked at a primary school as a manager of an adult community learning program. At the same time, I also had a hand in children’s extra-curricular activities. The head gave me a creative project to oversee. We were working in collaboration with a company that was exploring ideas of what art meant to children in Early Years (reception) and Years 1 and 2 (6- and 7-year-olds). At some point, one of the artists-in-residence asked the children if they knew where ideas came from. I can’t remember all the answers, but there was a girl in Year 1 who made a comment along the lines of: “They don’t come from anywhere. We always have ideas.”

So clever. We always have ideas. Indeed, we do. But we don’t always know what to do with them.

Schrödinger’s cat was always well and truly alive… and also dead

The creative process is not a passive one. Or at least not one where we can easily recognize passive and active components. The blank page is not there only to be written on, thought about, or agonized over. The blank page is also an invitation to a conversation. It creates its own activity by challenging us. Every time you open a new Word document on your PC, Mac, or laptop, you start a conversation. This conversation is primarily with yourself. Your readers are equally part of the equation, but they come after.

Small wonder that sometimes we’re terrified to carry out this conversation. Like my rental car and I, driving from Málaga airport to the Alpujarras mountains in Spain and wanting to stay on the motorway the whole time, the writer will do their utmost to avoid filling up the blank page. Both driver and writer agree on one thing: I’ll do anything, just as long as I don’t have to turn off at that junction.

What to do about ideas/words excess? What to do when you’re drowning in them, and yet you think you lack them?

Leave.

Switch your computer/laptop off.

Walk out.

Worry not that your inspiration will desert you. Worry more about what to do with what’s already inside you. The blank page, empty as it seems, is already teeming with propositions. But we need to leave it alone now. That blank page is both alive and dead.

In my case, what I tend to do is get on my bicycle. I can also go for a walk, but cycling is my way to “impose silence and space” on myself. For starters, I can go further, soaking up the sound patterns of my city along the way. I live in London, a metropolis with its own soundscape. And whichever way I go, usually no more than three-quarters of an hour away, I know I’ll have the silence and space I need in order to commune with myself.

In these places, amidst the egrets, the cormorants, and the geese, I create the mental borders inside which my ideas/words excess can roam freely. Because it’s not words I lack, but the possibilities of what to do with them.

It is in these moments of reflection that words begin to slot into place. In the same way, I become aware of my own body, what it can and can’t do when I work out, do yoga, marathon-train, or cycle, my mind undergoes a similar process. Phrases that until an hour ago lacked coherence and cogency take on a meaning of their own.

There was never a block. Just an overflow. Inspiration never leaves us. But it will hide from you once in a while just to make your creative journey more challenging and learning-rich.

Nowadays I no longer fear turning off at the wrong junction or missing it altogether. This is part and parcel of driving, just as a blank page is part and parcel of writing. Besides, even if you miss your exit, at least in Britain, you’re never too far away from a roundabout. And that’s some consolation, even for drivers who don’t mind “discovering new places”.

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