Sometimes a writer waits. And waits and waits and waits. We wait for edits, we wait for notes, we wait for ‘the call’, we wait. But the one thing I can’t wait for is inspiration. I’ve discovered that if I wait for inspiration I might spend my whole life wordless. Inspiration comes by planting my butt in the chair and writing. Writing is my job. In my life I’ve had a number of jobs. I am an attorney, although I don’t currently practice. I was also a motion picture agent. Whenever I find myself wanting to put off writing because I don’t feel ‘inspired’ I have to giggle with the idea of what a judge would have said if I’d shown up in their courtroom on a trial date and said…
“Eh, don’t want to go to trial today. I’m not feeling inspired.”
Hmm. I think a contempt of court citation might have been in order and perhaps even a night in the hooskow. So although as a writer I may spend a lot of time waiting for others to get back to me about a specific project I don’t have the luxury of waiting for inspiration to write. My stories don’t write themselves (oh if they did!). These little golden nuggets only get written if I have the discipline to sit down and make my fingers do the tippity-tappity dance across my keyboard. Even on a bad day, when pulling words out of my mind is akin to shoving toothpicks under my fingernails, I still get words onto the page. These stories can’t wait for my flitter flutter Muse to make an appearance. I figure while my Muse dances over a rainbow somewhere I can at least get the first draft finished and then maybe (hopefully) my Muse will be around to help me edit.
Have a Happy Weekend!
Maggie
The waiting is definitely hard in this industry, but yes, I agree you can't wait for inspiration, you can't wait for the perfect time, because sometimes it's just never going to be perfect and inspiration might not happen.