Chasing Inspiration (Sometimes with a Stick)

Some days inspiration shows up like a polite houseguest.

It knocks. You open the door. It sits down at the table and gets right to work.

The words flow. The ideas line up. And for a brief moment you wonder why anyone ever complains about the creative process.

Those days are wonderful.

They are also…not most days.

Most days inspiration is nowhere to be found. Not late. Not stuck in traffic. Just gone. Completely uninterested in your deadlines, your plans, or the perfectly reasonable amount of coffee you’ve already consumed trying to coax it into existence.

Which is why I’ve always loved this line from Jack London: “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

It’s not delicate advice. It’s not poetic. It sounds less like guidance for artists and more like something a frontier trapper might shout across a snowy field.

Which, frankly, tracks.

London wasn’t exactly the sit-by-the-fire-and-wait-for-muse type. Before he became famous for writing The Call of the Wild and White Fang, he worked a remarkable collection of jobs: oyster pirate, sailor, gold prospector, factory laborer. When he finally committed to writing, he approached it the way a lot of people approached logging camps in the early 1900s.

Show up. Do the work. Repeat tomorrow.

His rule was simple: 1,000 words a day. Every day.

Not “1,000 words when the muse arrives.”

Not “1,000 words once the lighting is right and the tea is steeped.”

Just…1,000 words. Every day.

The funny thing is, that approach tends to be how creative work actually gets done. The stories get written. The narration gets recorded. The projects get finished not because inspiration floated gently down from the heavens, but because someone sat down and got started.

And somewhere along the way, inspiration usually catches up.

Maybe it wanders in halfway through.

Maybe it shows up right near the end, acting like it was there the whole time.

Or maybe—if we’re being honest—you were chasing inspiration down the street and politely persuaded it with something resembling Jack London’s metaphorical club.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the practicality of that advice.

Inspiration is lovely when it arrives.

But if it doesn’t?

Well…there’s always a stick.