From: https://moretothat.com/the-labor-of-inspiration/
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Inspiration: laborer and fairy
If my creativity is scheduled in advance, then I look forward to the end of it more than I do the start. And since this removes the joy of what it means to create in the first place, it’s only inevitable that you face discontentment after some time.
If you start on something only when you feel inspired, then the beginning will always feel energizing.
Well, here’s the interesting thing about the fairy: When you’re at your lowest, it tends to come back in full force to rescue you.
While this sounds like a happy ending, the reality is that the fleeting nature of inspiration is cyclical. If you continue to rely upon the fairy’s whims to get you creating, then you will inevitably enter a dry spell again, and a familiar sense of creative despair will seep in.
In the beginning, things are exciting for the fairy, while daunting for the laborer. In the middle, a reliance upon the fairy results in disappointment, whereas a commitment to the laborer produces steady work. Toward the end, the fairy provides a jolt of inspiration, while the laborer finds the whole process to be quite tedious. And then, of course, the cycle continues.
The goal is to strike a balance between stability and serendipity, and then to import the result into the context of your day-to-day life. You want to remain on the upper half of the graph by transitioning between the two arcs, instead of staunchly staying on one and relying upon time to take you back up.
So the key here is to train your mind to accept both forms of inspiration, and to then practice transitioning between the two within a single day.
Since my ability to focus is highest in the morning, that’s when I adopt the laborer’s mindset. As a writer, my job is to write, and I don’t want to leave that up to the whims of circumstance. So I generally dedicate about 2 hours of each morning to my writing practice, and I do this even if I don’t feel like I have anything in particular to say.
Now, an ongoing string of this can get tired, burdensome, and make your creativity feel like a job. This is what we depicted on the laborer’s curve where it descended to discontentment. To prevent the monotony that could accompany this, what I’ll then do is switch characters and dedicate the remainder of the day to the fairy. In essence, once the laborer gets his 2 or 3 hours in, he goes to sleep and I open up space for the fairy to come play.
This means that I’ll allow serendipity to be the driving force of what I do. I’ll go for a nice walk, pick up a book I’ve always wanted to read, or play all kinds of silly games with my daughter. This is also the time in which I’ll have conversations with other creators and readers, whether it’s over email, in-person, or video. All of these activities allow me to absorb the world around me, whether materially or energetically. And ultimately, it’s through this blending of experiences that the fairy is given an opportunity to land and provide a spark of inspiration.
But in the end, perhaps inspiration’s greatest purpose is to reveal that the whole journey can be both rigorous and fun. That you can do the strenuous work required to actualize your potential, while also wander around freely to come into contact with the whimsical. That you don’t have to choose sides between the rational and the magical; that it’s possible to blend both of the two together when traversing this unknown path.