Tips for writers #2: Inspiration

+ Inspiration can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be quite fickle. If you want to be able to call on inspiration reliably then you need to work on it with regularity. You won't become a good cook by reading recipes alone; nor will you build muscles by merely reading the training manual. You have to actually perform the exercises.

Someone once said that if you only go out with a bucket to collect water when it's raining, sometimes you'll get water. But if you go out with your bucket every day, even when it's not raining, sometimes you'll catch unexpected rain. And also, a strange thing may happen: that the very act of going out with your bucket may actually provoke such rain.

So make a point of writing something -- about anything at all, even if you're not interested in the subject, and perhaps all the more so because of this -- each and every day.

Photo: Thomas Edison with an incandescent light bulb.

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+