Why let inspiration bully you any longer? Well, I've got news for you. Inspiration is over. And I don't know about you, but I'm done letting it bounce out of my reach. I'm done letting it be the boss of me.

It's time for us to be the ones to hit inspiration for a change. And that steel hammer looks like a good tool to start with.

Striking inspiration isn't fun. It's hard. It's like slugging through a river of cold butter. So in order to take a stand against this annoying inspiration beast, you're going to have to get over some things.

It won't be perfect.

The words you're grinding out are going to be ugly. They're going to sound like a toddler wrote them. The story you're crafting in this state is going to be riddled with plot holes.

In short, it's all going to stink. A lot.

But you've taken a step. You've gotten somewhere. You now have ground on which to stand. You have a starting point. And I can guarantee you that the next draft will be better than the last one.

In order to push through and hammer down inspiration, you have to remember ...

It won't be fun.

Writing without inspiration is unpleasant. You want to pull your hair out sometimes. You want to slam your head against the keyboard. You want to scream until your throat is hoarse. You'll be thinking, "What happened to the days of carefree, easy writing?"

Not only will it not be perfect or fun.

It won't be easy.

Someone (I'm not sure who originally said it) once said, "If writing was easy, everyone would do it." That's true about everything, isn't it? If painting was easy, we'd all be painters. If hockey was easy, we'd all be hokey players. Breathing is easy, and we all breathe, right?

But the easy things are the things people don't really look for. People don't seek out others who can breathe because everyone can do it.

When you don't have inspiration, you're going to sit at that keyboard and stare at that page and nothing. is. going. to. come. And it's going to be so frustrating. But take a deep breath and just start. Write about what your character had for breakfast. Write some of their thoughts. What's their best childhood memory? How many siblings did their best friend have? What's their biggest regret, and what in the story made them think of it and wish once again to change it?

Write garbage. Write trash. WRITE. And it'll flow eventually.

Sit down with your notebook and list all the plot holes. Don't wait for a realization to dawn about how to fix all the plot issues. Sit down and ask those questions, and think of logical answers. Create. Make the solutions come.

It won't be easy. It won't be fun. And it certainly won't be perfect. This attempt to strike inspiration will be grueling and miserable.

But it will be worth it.

It may not feel worth it in the moment. But if you wait for inspiration to write and build your story, you're not going to make much progress. You're going to fly to a gazillion different projects and not know what to work on because your mood changes too quickly. You're going to get nothing done, and you're likely not going to feel very good about it.

So stand up, writers! It's our turn to strike inspiration.


Do you tend to write only when you're inspired? What are some ways you overcome a lack of inspiration?