Finding Inspiration - Documenting a Creative Journey

As mentioned in a previous post, I am chronicling my path through the woods of becoming a published creative writer. This post is on the ephemeral topic of inspiration.


Finding Your Passion (aka Bliss, Love)

Is inspiration a special gift, granted to the lucky few like Orpheus, Mozart and Shakespeare, or is it a faculty YOU can cultivate and develop? My own view is that it is a bit of both. You have to first have some sort of talent, and then dabble -- be a creative dilettante -- until you find that talent, that thing that kindles the flame to your innate passion.

I believe that everyone has some sort of creative fire, but for different things depending on their temperament and talents. It makes me sad when I hear people who deride their own creative abilities, saying things like, "I don't have a creative bone in my body." I disagree. I believe that all humans (unless they have some sort of brain injury or condition) have creative capacity, but likely have stronger aptitudes for some fields over others. In order to see this about oneself, one has to first have the chance to discover that talent though, and then develop it. The lucky ones have parents who help foster experimentation for them as children, enrolling them in various classes until they find something that sticks. For the rest of us, the process of finding our bliss can be a life long heroic journey of believing and following where the still small voice within leads. While I myself had parents that encouraged and helped me try things as a child, I've found that the latter process has still been the primary driving factor in my own creative life.

Regardless of being talented and privileged or not, I've experienced that the fundamental underlying source of any creativity boils down to l♥ve. If you love a kind of music, a style of painting, sculpture, a scientific or philosophical topic, a genre of literature--if it SPEAKS to you in a deep and resonant way--then you're half way there. Finding a way to develop the love you have for something is the foundation for not just enhancing your enjoyment for the artistry of others, but in becoming more creative yourself.

Finding a Muse, Finding Your Bell

Love of the art, any art, is not just the doorway to creativity, but to finding a reliable key to that doorway -- the creative muse. While the muse was once taken seriously by poets and bards through the ages, her status has diminished. I think it's time we put her back up on the pedestal where she belongs. I myself have a few personal techniques to invoke a muse that helps me to write, and I'd like to share something of the tradition with you.

I first started summoning a muse to help me write when I was a child and I truly believed in the spirits of muses, just as I believed in fairies, ghosts and Santa Claus. However, I've found that unlike the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, my muse has become more, not less, real in time. She has become a resonant soundboard and a strong ally in my writing. She carries a quill, inks of many colours, as well as a bludgeon to crack me open when I'm dull, procrastinating and obstinate. She is also as real as my flesh and blood.

"Whoa!" you may be thinking right now. Have I gone off the deep end? Am I crazy? The muse is REAL? Bear with me, and perhaps you'll agree that the case is really that I've inadvertently benefited from classical conditioning. I've conditioned myself to my muse, so that now, she is real to me. You could probably even measure the reality of my muse in my brain with an MRI.

Whether or not you believe in a god or spirituality or not, fostering a belief mechanism in a muse of inspiration is a way to actually achieve a depth of inspiration, creativity and ingenuity in art. This at least has been my experience, and I think that Calliope, the Greek muse of epic poetry (pictured below), would approve.


Now, I'm not saying that you have to believe in an actual spirit that comes down from Mount Olympus. (Although, if picturing it that way works for you, go for it.) What I'm really talking about is connecting to a "muse" as a mind tool, a methodology of getting in touch with your own creativity. And the muse is a lovely way to do just that -- not to mention that it is ratified by thousands of years of use by poets, sages and artists.

The nuts and bolts of what I'm referring to is finding a trigger to get you in a creative mind frame. If, every time you sit down to write in your journal for instance, you invoke Saraswati (depicted in carving below) or have an imaginary conversation with Kwan Yin to bring you wisdom and grace in your writing, then what you are doing over time is actually hard wiring your brain to associate this invocation to your creative process of writing, to your creative mind.

Eventually, you can even virtually eliminate writer's block with this method, because even if you aren't in the mind frame to begin with, focusing on your muse will quickly take you there....just like Pavlov's dog and the bell. The muse is the bell.


So summoning the muse may initially sound airy-fairy, and it can even feel far out, but it is also a rational and powerful process of association. It's strength lies in that, over time, it can have very real and lasting results. For instance, if you develop a technique of invoking a muse every time you veer into a creative head space, then you are also developing a way to make the pathway to creativity easier and easier to get to. Just like practicing piano makes playing a piece easier and easier, you are developing the initial paths into highways towards your own creativity.

The ancient traditions of invoking the creative muse is hence, a real validation on practical usages of ritual. Create your own and try it out. You just may be on your way to developing a mastery of linking to your own creative spirit. And you know, if you make friends with one muse, before you know it you may, like Apollo below, eventually find yourself surrounded by a whole host of sources of inspiration.


Continue reading to Part III, Storyboarding.