I’ve been reflecting on the power of daily creative action.
It has come up over the years with clients who learn to define their success by whether they are working every day. The gallery shows, the novels published, the work sold are all built on that daily act of doing the work.
It comes up in every conversation with successful artists, artisans and writers in answer to…how do you do it?…where do you find the inspiration?…where do all your ideas come from?
The consistent answer is…they don’t wait for inspiration, they work daily creating a space for inspiration to emerge.
This is how I wrote How to Survive Your Grief in 60 days, a book I’d been thinking about writing for 4 years. I wrote first thing every morning. I didn’t answer e-mail, return phone calls, or anything else until I had written for at least 2 hours.
Some days were tortuous when I couldn’t find the words to communicate what I wanted while other days it simply flowed out of me. The act of writing was deeply satisfying no matter the quality and that sense of satisfaction stayed with me as I went through the rest of my day.
In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield quotes Somerset Maugham as saying: ’I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes everymorning at nine o’clock sharp’
Pressfield goes on to say, ‘…by performing the mundane physical act of sitting down and starting to work, he set in motion a mysterious but infallible sequence of events that would produce inspiration.’
So here’s my question for you…what could you create if you consistently gave it an hour or two a day?
P.S. Feel free to share in the comments.
Photo Credit: asifthebes
