Wednesday's Words 2

It's Wednesday again. I've already talked myself out of doing this and then talked myself back into it and then out again and here we are. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find time in the mornings lately. There are chores and other random things that take my attention away from this. I'm of course making excuses for giving other things in my life a higher priority than this. I have been struggling lately with the idea of writing. If you had asked me 5 years ago what inspires me I could have spouted off a does ideas that I would have written a poem about. I can't tell if my cynicism has taken over or I've just got nothing to really say. What ever did inspire me? Is it because I'm too aware of a critical audience and don't want to disappoint an unknown group of people who can't be pleased? Probably don't need to waste my time trying to figure it out.

I've always talked about inspiration while reminding myself that was just a word given to well thought out ideas to give it a more fantastical feel to it. Inspiration only gets you so far if you have no idea what to do with it. It takes time and daily efforts to make progress at it and to turn inspiration into something usable. Waiting for inspiration is a mistake. Looking for inspiration is a mistake. Creating inspiration is what I need to practice more. Hard work and effort will get it for me. Harlen Ellison, my spirit animal, once famously sat in a bookstore window for five hours and wrote The Night of Black Glass based on an unseen sentence that was given to him. He stressed that that's what writing actually was. There wasn't a trick to it. You just needed to work on it and give it time until it became what you wanted. That is something I have not done in a long long time, if ever. I used to dedicate whole nights to writing and giving up sleep as a means to do it. I have not done that in forever. I can't even remember the last time I spent more than 40 minutes working on writing something creative of my own. I should change that. I will change that.