It’s not really a secret - at least not unless you spend all your time waiting for it a free gift from the Muse.
It’s not that there are no gifts - sometimes creative inspiration does strike out of the the blue - but most of the time it strikes when you’re working.
I’m sure this is mentioned plenty in books about writing - I expect Stephen King mentions it a lot.
But we can - okay, I can - be remarkably deaf to good advice if it involves getting on with the hard slog of doing the actual work.
So how did I re-discover this?
After I finished reading Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus I paid for a subscription to the Freedom app, and I set up three two hour sessions a day - blocking Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
And it worked.
First couple of days I did a tiny bit of writing but a lot of reading, and some embroidery.
Then my novel-in-progress started to come alive. I had an outline, already, so I knew where I was going.
And sometimes that’s part of the problem - if I know exactly where I’m going it gets a bit boring.
But as I kept on writing, new ideas came along and even if it’s not all riveting on the page at the moment, it’s alive again in my imagination.
I mean, it’s not magic. It’s still hard work and there’s still a long way to go until I finish the first draft. BUT now I want to do it, and I have enough energy - more or less - to get on with it.
(I’ve also started walking again, after a long lupus flare up - with any luck this time it is really calming down!)
Ann
Bonus link to a good Open Culture short article on Stephen King and creativity
And (ahem!)
Here’s a post I wrote way back when I first started writing here…
Hunting Down Inspiration
And here’s the science bit! The two creativity pathways - insight and persistence