How To Find Creative Inspiration

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This is a note to myself really.

A good friend sent me a link to this guardian article via facebook. It is a collection of hints and tips from various creative professionals about how to find and nurture that elusive muse.

Ive made a collection of the most appropriate or resonant for me so that i can refer back to them when I need to. See what you think:

• Don’t be scared of failure.

• Daydream. Give yourself plenty of time to do nothing. Train journeys are good.

• Hard work isn’t always productive. Your brain needs periods of inactivity. I think of it as a field lying fallow; keep harvesting and the crops won’t mature.

• I like reading and watching movies, but mostly I find that it’s things I have seen or read a long time ago that come back to me. The things that you found inspiring when you were starting out usually stay with you.

• Don’t expect inspiration to happen when anyone else is watching. It usually happens when you are on your own, and it’s gone in a second.

• I go through messy phases and tidy phases. Being messy during a tidy phase is never good, and vice versa.

• Once you have an idea, scrutinise the precedent. If no one has explored it before in any form then you’re 99% likely to be making a mistake. But that 1% risk is why we do it.

• Make sure you are asking a question that is addressed both to the world around you and the world within you. It’s the only way to keep going when the doubt sets in.

• To be truly inspired, you must learn to trust your instinct, and your creative empathy. Don’t over-rehearse a part, or you’ll find you get bored with it. Hard work is important, but that comes before inspiration: in your years of training, in your ballet class, in the Pilates classes. That work is there just to support your instinct and your ability to empathise. Without those, you can still give a good, technically correct performance – but it will never be magical.

• We all have that small voice that tells us we’re rubbish, and we need to learn when to silence it. Early in the songwriting process, comparisons do nothing but harm: sometimes I put on a David Bowie record and think, “Why do I bother?” But when it comes to recording or mixing, you do need to be your own critic and editor. It’s a bit like having children: you don’t interfere with the birth, but as your child grows up, you don’t let it run wild.

• An idea is just a map. The ultimate landscape is only discovered when it’s under foot, so don’t get too bogged down in its validity.

• Don’t be afraid to scrap all your hard work and planning and do it differently at the last minute. It’s easier to hold on to an idea because you’re afraid to admit you were wrong than to let it go.

• Be kind to your voice. If you want it to inspire you, you have to inspire it, with lots of rest, steam, sweets and a good talking to every now and again.

• Love the effect over its cause.

03.01.12 | 11:17