Apódosi

Life is a crazy thing. It happens to you all day every day. You set goals for yourself and then it leaps in and makes something that was easy yesterday, a challenge for tomorrow. Sometimes it is not even a tangible difference, sometimes the brain literally just doesn’t have the same drive as it had in the past. Then, just as easily as it disappeared the drive returns and everything that seemed challenging suddenly becomes easy, almost instinctual.
Beginning April last year I was writing multiple blogs a week. I had set a goal to write at least once a week and up until October I was accomplishing that goal really well. In reality I was still doing well beyond October, my writing just shifted from blog to book. I turned my focus to completing a book I’ve been writing for years. Yet, after a few months, even that began to dwindle. I went from working daily for a finished draft once every one to two weeks, to working an entire month on a single chapter.
I don’t know what it is that causes the motivation to shift. It might be like eating the same meal for a month and your taste buds yearn for something new. It could be like exercising and you push yourself too hard and end up too sore to work out the next day. Perhaps life just gets too overwhelming to make time for anything but the most important things. It really comes to a point you need something to pull you out of the slump.
To give myself a little credit I have produced some form of writing at least once a month since I set my goal of writing. I am simply recognizing the steep drop off of writing almost daily, to the excruciating work of producing a single product in a month.
Creativity needs creativity to breed.
I was talking with my brother the other day and he began to tell me something he was working on. A story he’d been writing had stumped him and he was going back and reorganizing. As he spoke I began to think of my own story and my characters that I had interacted with just occasionally over the last few months. Just the short brief touch on his own creativity sparked a desire to get back to those characters. For the first time in months I felt a motivation, outside of obligation, to get back to my story and write.
Like corn, creative flourishes when in the presence of similar creativity. It’s that push to be creative and do what you love with the idea someone else might be inspired as well. Not Inspiration from your intense vocabulary or your skills on the paper, but inspired by your creativity. With that you earn your own dose of inspiration as the person shares their new found ideas with you.
So thanks to some inspiration here I am again, back at the place where things are easy. Here I can write without over thinking a storyline or keeping characters straight. I know exactly what my brain is saying and the only skill required is knowing how to put the words down. It seems like no matter how far I get away from writing, it’s to writing I always return.