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Where You Can Find Inspiration

Pushing Through Artist's Block

By Juli PopePublished 6 years ago 11 min read
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The short answer is everywhere. However, if you're anything like me, that word—everywhere—is going to need some elaboration.

For the moment, let's look at the mind like a vast, vast ocean, larger than life, deeper than perception. In our consciousness, we stand at its shore, toes hardly damp as the waves ebb and flow. Us artists like to sit a while with our eyes wide open, hoping with all our might that something of value may just wash up—and when it does, we drop everything and snatch it up, for fear of it disappearing back into the waves.

If you like wasting your own time, this is the way to do it.

Like many things in life, inspiration hardly ever comes to you; you've got to at least meet it halfway, if not completely chase it. Otherwise, it's going to drop by at the most inopportune moments—if it bothers to drop by at all—and in any case, you're going to be in a pickle. Even if you do manage to get ahold of it and get to crafting, it can't last long. Give it about five minutes; it'll die on you that quickly.

So how, you ask, do you go about acquiring this inspiration? This muse? If my waiting loyally for its return from the ocean isn't enough for you, what is?

I'll tell you a secret: the best things in life are not free.

Yeah; I said it. Family, friends, health, well-being, and even the great outdoors are only good if they're fought for. You have to put forth an effort in your relationships, or they turn sour and stressful. You have to try and take care of yourself, or—guess what? You're going to feel like crap. And, yes, even Mother Nature herself requires you to consciously appreciate her blue skies and accept her dreaded mosquitoes in order for her fruit to bear any value for you.

Now, apply this to your art.

If the mind is an ocean, the senses are the rivers and streams that feed it, and the world is the land they run through. They pick up bits of debris as they pass, carrying it all to the ocean, where it is soon lost in its depths.

However, occasionally some curious and resilient piece of junk will find its way into one of these streams. It will pool into the ocean, and, miraculously, find its way to you. You are inspired. You pluck the low-hanging fruit and are on your merry way to burn it up as carelessly as a teenager burns their weekly paycheck. You fool.

What if I were to tell you that you don't have to sit back and wait for trash to come to you? That's right. You can go dumpster diving all on your own. Or even better—you can search for things that aren't trash! Doesn't that sound grand?

All you have to do is make a job out of it—and yes, I do mean that. You up your chances of success when you make effort a conscious habit. You can do this with your art in various ways.

Record what inspires you!

You're going to come across some things in life that just light up your brain, even if for a split second. Take note of them! I don't care if that means taking a picture, jotting down some nonsensical, quick phrase, or simply muttering "note to self." Let those gems make an impression—one you can go back to later, when you're drawing a blank.

Sometimes, I use my passing feelings as an inspiration. I look at my experiences, the ones I find remarkable, and I mull them over for a moment, asking myself what makes them remarkable. What about them makes them story-worthy?

Or, sometimes, something bizarre will happen, and I'll think: you could write a book on that. For example, once on a summer run, I passed by a very old lady riding a very small, very bright bicycle. Her neon orange-and-pink outfit matched the colors of the bike perfectly, and she wore very out-of-place razor sunglasses. She also had a little flag on the back of the bike.

Nothing has ever come of this experience, but maybe someday, something will. In any case, I took serious note of it. I'm a fan of eccentric characters, so one day, one just might derive from Bike Lady. I have more content to use when I need it.

Anyway, this goes for all mediums of art—singing, dancing, acting, writing, drawing, you name it. (Coincidentally, I do about 80% of those things, so you can trust me on this.)

People watching never hurts.

Okay, it may sound creepy, but let's be honest: who out of us hasn't found ourselves caught up in watching a stranger? We're always glancing around, trying to discern whether or not we're blending with the crowd- so naturally, when someone is standing out, our eyes are drawn to them.

You can gain a lot by simply examining the stories of others as they happen. In acting especially, studying the habits of the people around you proves very useful when you're searching for such unique characteristics in portraying a character. I, for example, have never smoked a cigarette— but I once had to play a frequent smoker for a production I was in. This woman was also 40 years old, raised in an indigenous background (on a reservation, specifically), and had grown up in the fifties, as the setting of the play was around 1970–1980. I was a millennial, hardly 17, with practically non-existent Native American lineage and a background mainly dominated by Hispanic and African-American culture. Huge, huge, huge gap there.

So I began to look around me—not just online, but in my day-to-day life—to find the habits my character would clearly have. I studied middle-aged women, how they walked and talked and perceived the world. I paid close attention to old-time smokers, how they held their cigarettes, how they talked with them, how they talked without them. What their voices sounded like. I examined the mindframes of 40s and 50s kids (hardly kids now), as well as reservation-raised adults, and I gauged the gap between myself and my character.

As a result, besides there being a slightly smaller gap in my portrayal on stage (hooray), I found myself equipped with so much more information, so many more ideas, than I would've had otherwise. I made some headway into the perspective of an adult, enough so that I might comprehend certain aspects that were lost to me before. Now, I can write an adult character that is more realistic, or style more feasible poses and expressions when drawing an adult character. Or, if I am to sing a song from an adult perspective, I'd do it better than I might have without studying the candid reality around me.

I will admit that this is not a way to really, truly understand certain perspectives—you're just an outsider looking in, after all. But there are so many things you can discover about a person just by seeing them interact with the world, no matter how mundane that interaction is. And the more you see, the more the possibilities begin to open up in your mind. You create greater streams and rivers to explore, opening the flow of ideas even further.

Question everything.

There is no quicker way to stunt a school of thought than to passively accept things as they are.

Do you think J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter by telling herself, "Well, magic isn't real, so that's that"? No. She asked, "What if magic was real?" and she got to describing the possibilities.

Another example, a more complex one—Lin Manuel Miranda. When writing the songs for Hamilton, what do you think drove him to frame Hamilton's story in the way that he did? He could have read the biography that inspired the show and thought, "Wow. Interesting," and left it at that. But he asked himself, "Why isn't this a musical?" Or, in other words, "What would happen if I were to convert this story into musical format?" And, upon its completion, his show became a nationwide phenomenon—because people are interested in the answers to questions they don't bother to ask.

Now, take a look at the things that interest you and inspire you. Ask why things are the way that they are, and what if things were different. I, personally, have just finished the draft of a short story, all through asking questions of the things I've seen. For example, the notion of a serial killer intrigued me, dark as it may seem.I asked myself—why do serial killers tend to have patterns? How can anyone stomach taking the life of a single person, let alone a series of people premeditatively? What if art was a murderer's drive? What if their worst fear was not of death or incarceration, but of judgment itself? And thus, a story was born.

Every story, told through song, speech, dance, images, or text, is merely the result of a series of questions—usually with one large, overarching question ruling over them all. Ask the right questions and give the right answers, and you just may catch on to what it is you're hoping to create.

And most importantly, keep the ball rolling!

Make it a habit. In fact, make it a chore. As I've said earlier, the best things in life are not free. If you want to be great, or even good, you need to dedicate yourself to your craft.

People tell me I'm a talented writer. Do you think I suddenly decided I wanted to write and was a regular Flannery O'Connor right out of the gate? No; way back in the second grade, I decided I wanted to write a story. It was titled, The Journey of Susan and Moe. It was awful. Seven pages long, and a total rip-off of every kid's movie I'd seen up until then. Thanks to the (likely unwarranted) encouragement of my teacher, I thought, I can do this, andI want to write something better. I want to write something amazing.

I moved onto the terrible, unfinished drafts of my middle school years. I knew they were bad, and nothing like the wonderful worlds I experienced on television and in the library, but I knew that I could write something better, eventually. And I wouldn't stop until I did.

To this day, the most I've ever written is an ongoing fanfiction that totals to thirty-five chapters. I can't publish it, and if I could, I wouldn't. Don't misunderstand me; I'm very proud of this work, particularly, and it's not only my longest enduring project (four years in the making), but it holds great meaning to me. But I know that I'm not where I want to be in my craft.

So I write almost daily, branching out the genres of my works as far as I'm capable of, assured that one day, I may write something as profound as John Steinbeck's East of Eden, or as heart-wrenchingly lovely as The Beautiful and Damned, or as epic and haunting as The Hunger Games. I want to do all of this and more, so I don't stop.

The same principle goes for my drawing, acting, and singing. These are hobbies; I have no intention of making a career out of any of them. Yet I sketch in my journal every day. I read books on performance theory, even if they feel tedious. I sing anytime I can (it's difficult when you live on campus). Heck, I even strive to learn songs on the piano. I know nothing about playing the piano, and I never intend to truly learn. I just want to play certain songs. So I do, daily, until my fingers have memorized their movements and I'm playing the song as smoothly as ever.

And, before you dismiss the idea with the common excuse, "I don't have free time," please keep in mind that I am a full-time college student scrambling to make ends meet financially, as I am flying by the seat of my pants. If you want something, you make time. I sing in the shower, and while cleaning. I sketch while taking notes in lectures. I write on my homework breaks. Don't lie to yourself; you have time. Dig for it.

In Summation,

Inspiration is literally everywhere. But to get the good stuff, you've got to work for it. Not only is that the way the world works generally, but it is a direct result of the murky mess that is the human mind.

Knowing this, I advise you to weigh your options wisely. What's more important to you: your art, or the things you'd have to sacrifice for it? It can be a tough decision, but I trust you have the sense to make the right choice for yourself.

Whatever you decide, I leave you with a quick and sincere がんばって— aphrase I love that, notably, does not mean "good luck." It asks you, instead, to work hard. You know you can.

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About the Creator

Juli Pope

A young writer, practicing with short stories. If you like what you read, please leave a tip, or- better yet- share the story!

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