What Do You Do When You Lose Inspiration?
When you forget what you were doing and why you were doing it?
Well.
I think you sit with not doing it for a while. Just sit. Not working.
Then, continue to live your life. See how that feels.
If the project leaves you alone, great. You’re free of it. Go live your beautiful life.
But, if the project doesn’t leave you alone – if it pulls at your sleeve like a child, and floats through your mind while you’re doing the dishes, you know you have to get back to it.
It can be hard to get back into a project after the initial burst of inspiration. But, this is where the true work begins. To go from being someone inspired to write, or sing or knit. To being a writer, a singer, a knitter.
This is where the work is, where the mistakes happen. Where you fine tune your voice, and get your arms around the thing you want to say, the stories you want to tell.
So when you find yourself empty of everything but the desire to get back to it, try this:
Return to your document. Go ahead and read through it. Let yourself tinker with sentences, or tell a story a different way. This is the work. You’re back in it. Keep going. When you get to the end, write a few more sentences. Thread that needle.
Return to the classes. If you’ve taken classes through 88 Pages, you still have access to that lesson. Give yourself an hour or two and take a class again. It will not be the same this time. It is different because you are different.
Return to your notes. If you started with a spreadsheet as we do in the personal stories class, go back to that now. Can you add details or flesh out another era? Pick up where you left off and do the next right thing.
Start anew. Open a new document and write new sentences. Tell new stories or the same stories in a different way. Soon, the words will pile up, like snowflakes. Keep going. You’re in it now.
I have always loved the poem “Work” by Ramond Carver. I’m too afraid to include it in its entirety for fear of violating copyright but here’s the first line, “Love of Work / The blood singing in that.” You can find the rest of it his collected poems titled All of Us, available from Vintage Contemporaries.
