Angela Natividad's Live & Uncensored!

30 August 2017

Creative Constraints

Someone lamented last week that she can't write because inspiration strikes so rarely. How, she wondered, does one keep inspiration full and burning?

I suffer from this problem with my personal projects, but I also write for a living and have rarely missed a deadline. I've written double-digit amounts of blog posts in a day, spent years contributing regularly to various columns, and live on deadlines that expect a certain number of stories daily, weekly, monthly.

I am not always inspired. Sometimes I have to stare at something for a long time to find my way into a topic. Often I'm not happy with the door I found, but have to pound on anyway, because a deadline is a deadline. And even if a deadline is a deadline, it still has to engage both the buyer and the audience. You can't just call this stuff in.

Successful writing isn't the sole domain of geniuses or virtuosos, so blessed with inspiration that the cups of their sanity run over, transforming them into the tragic figures we like to fantasise about. Successful writing is as gristy as a day job: You show up, bleary-eyed, and sometimes hate what you're doing. But your job is simple: You find your way in. When you are paid to write, you have no choice.

But like I said, I suffer from that same whingey inspiration complaint with my personal projects. No one is paying me for those or expecting me to show up. If I never find the time to do them, if I'd rather binge watch all of GoT instead, no one will ever know. The world won't languish at its loss.

So I was thinking maybe the key is not waiting for inspiration but imposing your own constraints on stuff you're passionate about. Maybe it can't be money, not at outset, but there are more compelling levers than money: A writing group you respect and that you want to perform for. A promise to yourself to meet a word count daily, monthly, yearly, no matter what, no excuses. Finally beating NaNoWriMo.

This model has served me pretty well in knitting: All my friends are having babies and I've committed to knitting them all stuff. They're probably not always thrilled with the results (well, I hope they are—that's my blood, sweat and tears, man) but it's something they've come to expect, and the deadlines of births have become as much a driving force as money.

It's also a model that served Bill, Darryl and me well when we wrote Generation Creation. Every week we had a Skype call. Every week we were expected to show up and do our little part to avoid letting everyone else down. We had a book in a year.

If I can do the same thing with my personal writing, I won't be in a bad place. I just need to find my lever.

Seen from this perspective—just a matter of finding the right lever—there's very little that seems difficult. Inspiration is a pipe dream. It comes if it comes, but it's an unfaithful lover: Appreciate it when it's there, but don't, like, try building your life on top of it.

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