Creative Genius' Advice on Inspiration
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." Pablo Picasso
I know not everyone who reads Existential Espresso is an aspiring artist. But through interacting with my audience and paying attention to the most frequently asked questions, I’ve noticed that a large portion of my readers like to express their creativity in some form or would like to start doing so.
And one of the biggest questions, if not the biggest, regarding any kind of creative work is "How to find inspiration?" or "What to do when you have no inspiration?"
To be fair, everything that I am about to write can be summed up in the quote from the beginning. However, I would like to try to convince you by sharing a piece of advice that I picked up from two prolific writers. One writes both fiction and nonfiction books. The other one writes movies, novels, and stage plays. One explicitly gave out this piece of advice. The other one shared a story about his creative process, from which I picked up what was useful for me. But what both of them have to say comes down to the same thing. And although both of them talk about writing, I believe it’s going to be easy for you to translate this piece of advice to any creative activity you decide to engage in.
Steven Pressfield is an American author best known for "The War of Art," his nonfiction book that is recommended by some of the most successful writers, artists, and other kinds of creatives today. If you haven’t read it, I also recommend that you do.
However, the piece of advice I’m talking about here didn’t come from his book. At least I don’t remember reading it there. But it’s something that he mentioned in almost every podcast where he was a guest. Pressfield never stops writing.
When he is about to finish one book, he already has the idea for the next book lined up. Sometimes he even writes the first couple of pages of the next book while he is still in the process of finishing the previous one. Why? To keep the momentum going. Pressfield says that if he doesn’t keep his writing streak alive, the break will only hinder his creativity. And the longer the break is, the further away he will be from what we call inspiration.
Another writer who uses the same method is Quentin Tarantino. And no, I won’t be giving you an introduction to who Quentin Tarantino is and what he is known for.
Tarantino has stated on multiple occasions that if he had to choose his best work, he thinks it’s "One Upon a Time in Hollywood." Of course, it will depend on what each individual viewer considers his best film to be. But the story about how he wrote what he considers his greatest work gives us an insight into how Tarantino deals with creative work and inspiration.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood started off as a book, then turned into a stage play, and eventually ended up as a movie script. And this whole process lasted 8 years. Why so long? Because it was actually Tarantino’s side project that he used to keep himself in writing shape. When he would finish a movie that he was making, he would go back to working on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood just for the sake of continuing to write. Just like Pressfield, he didn’t want to take a break, as that would draw him further away from that creative environment where inspiration strikes.
This went on for years, and Tarantino was looking at this project as something that he would never necessarily finish or make something great out of but would use to keep himself active between real projects. So after he was done making his movie "Hateful Eight," he returned to it once again, thinking that he would eventually stop in order to start another project. However, as he says, there was no stopping this time. As he describes, he couldn’t stop, and it was as if the whole story poured out of him. I guess Picasso would say that inspiration found Tarantino working.
I know some of you have hoped for a more mystical tip on creativity and inspiration, especially from as prolific a creator as Tarantino is. But the boring truth behind creative work is that you cannot wait for inspiration to strike you from the heavens.
Or, as writer Peter De Vries brilliantly put it,
"I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning."
Thank you for reading.
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