The word “inspiration” is a noun; it’s something that happens in our imaginations. But today I’m thinking that maybe inspiration, while being a noun, is also a verb, an action, a thing that we choose to do rather than a thing we wait to happen. To be clear, I think inspiration is both a noun and a verb simultaneously. I have both had inspiration happen to me, and I have made inspiration happen for me. But, for the sake of this post, I want to elaborate on why I see inspiration as more than a thing that passively happens in our imaginations.

I’ve written before about inspiration and writer’s block. I won’t dive back into those particular angles here, although I certainly think they still apply. Rather, I want to extend a personal anecdote of how I came to this specific way of understanding inspiration.

Last week, I finished reading a book of poetry called Beast Meridian (find my book review of it here). If you read the review, you’ll see that I spend a lot of time talking about the last section of the book, specifically the ways in which Villarreal uses mythology and magical realism to navigate deeper issues of trauma and displacement. I mention in the review that these last eleven poems are what have stayed with me the strongest. Indeed, they were on my mind all weekend, even as I started reading two other books of poetry. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them.

This week, I’ll be turning in my first packet of my last semester. I’m working on writing my letter to my faculty mentor and as I was writing about my experience reading Beast Meridian, an idea struck me that made my entire body tingle. It was an idea loosely based off the last section of Villarreal’s book. I started writing frantically about it in the letter to my mentor, letting the ideas lead me in a lot of different directions. I doubt these ideas will feature in my thesis, and they likely won’t feature in my first book-length collection, either. But I still found myself filled with inspiration, all due to writing about my experience reading Beast Meridian.

Maybe this means that inspiration isn’t always something we have to wait for, but rather is something we can conjure? Something we create within ourselves? Something we can develop an instinct for the more we write and read? And it’s not that I think there’s something wrong with waiting for inspiration, just that I feel there’s an image of creativity as a passive thing, rather than something we can hone and strengthen. I’ve experienced both types of inspiration: the kind that just comes to me, and the kind that I manifest, and I can say with certainty that I will always prefer the kind I manifest. It eliminates the “sit and wait” habit that I think a lot of creators fall into.

Because here’s the truth: we can’t always feel creative. And when we don’t “feel” creative, chances are we will struggle to feel inspired. But if we can move ourselves towards creativity, then we can claim more control over the inspiration process. Freewriting is a great example. When younger writers don’t know what to write, we’re encouraged to freewrite. Maybe we’re given specific prompts, and maybe we just start writing. Regardless, we move from a place of passivity to a place of activity. In that way, we can always move ourselves closer to creativity and inspiration, even on days when it feels like a chore.

Anyway, these are just some ideas I’ve been mulling over.