I’ve been struck by inspiratioooonnnnnnn!!!!!

(old old post, published in 2019)

A bolt of lightning — buzzing with energy and power — is headed your way. It cuts across the darkness of the night and intercepts you, bursting into light the moment it touches your skin. All of a sudden, you are laden with all-powerful glory, with the perfect skill-set required to blast off every hurdle that should come in your way. Your mind's capacity is now beyond this world — its thoughts racing against time itself. You are crackling with invincible energy and ideas come to you like a gust of wave, strong and confident. You —

Hold up! Now I know, when you read ‘struck by inspiration’ that’s the kind of perfect image that comes to your mind. But hey, nothing is perfect! And inspiration never was.

So, if inspiration isn’t a sudden bolt of lightning, then what is it? Ideas? Thoughts? Positivity? Determination? Chai/coffee? The smell of books? Long walks? Cafés? Diaries and heavily-guarded precious pens? Music? Ghar ka khana? (Homemade food?) Brushes, paints and any blank object? Buns and dungarees? Wooden desks? Forests? Beaches? Mountains? Animals and cuddly pets? Awesome people? Nature? Pep-talks? Fudgy brownies with 20 helpings of ice-cream and additional chocolate syrup?

Yup, it’s all of them. The first four is what comes to you and what you feel when you are ‘struck by inspiration’. The rest are examples of things that inspire us and get you that amazing feeling(except for the last one—that’ll just get you a case of brain freeze and sugar rush). We all need inspiration especially when we’re working on some project and need some creativity to flow in. There is no single way to feel inspired or get inspiration: you need to figure out what your way is. I, for one, adore reading something else of a similar genre to get ideas for stories or listening to my playlist.

The best way to get inspired is to bring yourself into a state of deep thought. Doing something or surrounding yourself with something is often how one is ‘struck by inspiration’. Do something that makes you feel passionate and excited about what you do. Do something that you like to do. Do something that you truly enjoy. Do this stuff and you should find yourself feeling happy and positive.

To put stuff simply, take a writing project for example: you’ve got an essay topic on, say, Animals and you have to think of a sub-topic for the same and write about it. You’re sitting over a blank page fiddling with your pencil in your messy cramped room and you decide to take a break from your homework. So, you get up and take a stroll into your living room, where you sit in front of the windowsill enjoying the fresh air, which clears up your mind. You then move to sit next to a family member and look at the newspaper in his/her hands. A title about how global warming is causing great numbers of extinction in animals catches your eye...and voilà! You find yourself with a new perspective on the topic. You’ve got an idea!

Now, one very important thing about inspiration is that one must be prompt and spontaneously begin. If you put your idea into action after too long, your work may not come out as well, because that feeling of revelation and determination may fade, leaving you back to procrastinating. Even worse, you may forget that idea! (That is really the worst. If all the writers in the world never forgot anything, there would easily be at-least ten times more books, which meant readers would have longer tbr lists and—you know what, never mind, the world is fine as it is.)

And note! Inspiration is not copying! So don’t feel uncertain or bad when you’ve felt inspired—nothing in the world is original. However, note again! You may take inspiration but do not use this as a convenient excuse to copy!

So, next time, I hope inspiration comes your way faster and that you should find yourself with a gigantic chest full of ideas (take notice that however hard is, you’ve got to choose one idea and settle on it or the problem starts allllllll over again. As the saying goes, both too little or too much of anything is bad and this is so true for ideas).

Until then, adiòs (I’ve been attempting to learn Spanish and umm...why can’t I seem to remember any more words?)

Au revoir, then. (At least I know French better?)

Oh, also: MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!! May you get listed on Santa's good list!

Ananya Pathak

Photo Credits: Yours truly

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