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Inspiration is Mostly a Myth · The Daily Writer

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Writer, where we share a lesson each day to help you cultivate the habits for creative success.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: We writers love to create stories.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And why not?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's something fun about creating a fantasy world, living in it for a while, and inviting other people to join us there.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes as writers, we also have trouble getting out of that fantasy realm and living in the realm of reality.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: One of the fantasies that we love to live in as writers is this idea of sitting down to write and feeling inspired with all sorts of motivation and great ideas right off the bat.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't always work that way.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Many times, or perhaps even most of the time, when we sit down to write, we're not really feeling the creative juices flowing.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when this happens, we assume this has something to do with our talent or perhaps even our calling as writers, and we start to think, maybe I'm not so great after all, and should I even be writing in the first place?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Stephen King gave us some incredible wisdom when he said this.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: The rest of us just get up and go to work.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: One important thing to keep in mind about your writing is that inspiration doesn't usually come on the front end of the writing session.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, you have to sit down, start writing, get to work, and after you've done some writing, after you've put in a little bit of time, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, the muse starts to show up and gives you some inspiration to keep going.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Inspiration is like that feather from the beginning shot of the movie Forest Gump.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fickle thing that comes and goes as it pleases.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's blown by the wind, and you never quite know when or where it's going to land.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But instead of relying on that fickle sense of inspiration, a much better system is just committing to the work than following through with it.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's what all true professionals do.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much, and I'll see you tomorrow.