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This was a very amusing and colourful way to illustrate the issue of inspiration! I enjoyed this quite a bit.

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Feb 14, 2022Liked by Patrick E McLean

I have found that the times I felt I had no more creative juices left in my brain, when the day had left me spent and worn out, if I just made myself write with the goal of a mere five minutes, I'd find the words flowing and the minutes melting away unnoticed until when I finally look up I've written something that surprised me and may even be some of the best stuff in the book!

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YES! I'm writing a lot at the end of the day now. And I think there's something to being so tired that you can't stop your subconscious from being the genius it can be.

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I remember a friend once telling me that he equated "I don't feel inspired" to "I don't feel like doing that thing", like it was matter of being lazy. I explained that it was rather a matter of being out of ideas, which he accepted. But I guess it could be lazy to wait for inspiration rather than being more proactive.

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It's tough. Definitely I feel drained sometimes. But you know, you show up and you try, and more goo stuff happens. I'm not saying there's a 1:1 relationship between effort and inspiration, but they ARE related. The more I work, the more excited I get.

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I suppose there's the risk of things becoming 'forced' though? I got the impression that for new Bond films, they've had a lot of cool ideas for the initial one in a batch, but when the second and third one has to be released with just a year in between, they end up with significantly less cool and fresh ideas, since the first one had several years to accumulate cool ideas. I remember Golden Eye being quite awesome, but the rest of the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies weren't very good.

But that's less about inspiration and more about... crop rotation of ideas?

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