Inspiration Strikes...

At the most inopportune time.

Usually when I'm at work and can't do anything about it.

Well, I can do something about it, but the boss tends to not like it. Which is why I have approximately 1.5 million random pieces of paper scattered around my room, purse, laptop bag, and living room ranging in size from a quarter sheet full of scribbles to full 8x11 typed sheets that I jotted down my ideas on between helping customers and dodging managers.

My beautiful mess... Well, some of my beautiful mess.

Or when I'm driving.

It's really dangerous to pull out a legal pad and pen to jot down notes while driving 75-ish mph on the interstate. I won't say how I know (I'm sure you can guess), but this is probably the last thing I would recommend for somebody to do, right after swimming with sharks in a meat suit or eating brussel sprouts. So, it's a good thing that I recently discovered that my phone has a voice memos options so I can just record my random musings out loud. The one downside to this is, I have to listen to myself. I don't know how anybody can stand to hear me talk.

But there was a purpose to this post and that is:

Inspiration can and will strike whenever it damn well pleases and not necessarily when it is ideal for the strikee. It might come when an interesting-looking person walks by or with a stray comment from a friend. A smell might bring it or a simple flash of color.

Heck, I got an idea for a short story about the afterlife today when "Sally's Song" from Nightmare before Christmas came on my Pandora station.

That doesn't mean an artist can only work when that lightning strikes. It's actually not very good for their art if they do that considering how infrequently it happens. Sometimes you have to nudge it along... or blindfold and hogtie it, throw it in the trunk of your car, and drive it out to a cabin in the woods to help you finish your project.

As fun as that sounds, I wouldn't recommend it. Kidnapping a concept is still kidnapping and kidnapping is wrong.

After all of this, if your process is still to work by inspiration alone, do all you can to surround yourself with anything that will peak the Muses' interests and keep the creative juices flowing through you.

If that involves face-smashing your keyboard to the beat of "Meet the Enemy" by Eluvetie until you get the brilliant idea to write a story about a head-banging music fan who follows their favorite death metal band around the world committing murders along the way, so be it.