Your inspiration has an expiration date

Quick note before we dive in.

I’m taking 3 more writers into a small, high-touch creative community. We review each other’s newsletters live every week. It’s tight-knit, first come first serve.

If that sounds like your kind of room, DM me the word “Community” and I’ll see if you’re a fit.

Okay, now onto the piece.

If you’re a writer, an artist, anyone who creates, you know this feeling.

You’re driving. You’re in the shower. You’re a split second from falling asleep.
And IT hits you.

Like a fire lit with gasoline. Your eyes go wide. Something fires in your chest. You sit up straighter without deciding to.

But you’re constrained.

You’re behind the wheel. You’ve got shampoo in your hair. Or it’s the middle of the night and you know, the way you always know, that your morning self will loathe you for getting up to write this down.

So you think: “I’ll get to it later.”

But when later comes, the inspiration doesn’t follow.

A good friend has a name for it:

“That’s old energy. That’s the energy from when I first felt IT. It’s not relevant for me right now, today, in this moment.”

Old energy.

That’s exactly what it is.

Ideas aren’t to be confused with content. Content runs on your schedule. Ideas don’t.

You don’t have ideas. Ideas have you.

Every idea arrives with a charge. Thoughts and feelings tangled together. The charge is what animates the idea. It’s what makes it feel alive in you, not just true.

Some charges last for years. Those are the ideas that keep calling you until they’re brought to life. They need you. Or maybe you needed to create them.

But most don’t last that long. Most refuse to wait. They hate to be stood up. They arrive lit up for a particular moment, for reasons you can’t quite explain. An energy moving through you, from somewhere you can’t quite name.

I’ve channeled ideas that flowed through me so completely the writing felt incidental. I was just the vessel.

And I’ve had ideas I was sure I could write later. An hour, maybe two. I’d sit down, play with them, and the idea would be right there. Technically correct, as it’s supposed to be.

Like a perfectly painted white wall.

Even. Smooth. Lifeless.

The thing that wanted to move through me didn’t make it through. It flowed back instead of out. Back to wherever it came from.

The work doesn’t feel right. It isn’t complete. Now I have to rediscover the spark. But even when I do, it’s never the same shade.

You won’t always be able to create when inspiration arrives. Life has its own rhythm. But not all inspiration will wait for you.

Over time, you learn to feel the difference. You feel when something is so alive it’s asking to move through you right this second. That’s when you pull the car over. Get out of bed at 2am. Step out of the shower dripping wet, fingers slipping across the screen, water making the letters type strange.

The rest can wait.

But never mix the two. Most of your best work comes from the moments you didn’t postpone.

Inspiration doesn’t wait.

-Taylin

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I send one piece a week (sometimes two). Either deep tactical breakdowns of the craft, or the things most creative people are feeling but haven’t quite said out loud.