Freelance work has its plusses. A stranger at a fancy dinner said to me last week, “Oh, you can work from anywhere.” Sure, I can wake up and start to work when I want from wherever I want – in my bed, from a fabulous resort in Indonesia, on a train. It doesn’t matter as long as I have a computer or a phone. Or just a pen and paper.
The issue a freelance creative (or at least this one) struggles with is where the inspiration comes from. I mean the part of my business work that isn’t already a known. The non-client work. The work I do just for me.
For this work, inspiration has to come from somewhere else. But where?
Read a lot is one way successful writers say to fill up your creative well. I read, maybe not enough, maybe not enough of the right stuff. I spend too much time falling into the rabbit hole of the theater of politics. I don’t learn much. I just get mad. Still, if you read books and other media, you get a sense of the possibilities (and how it’s done). Sometimes topics I wouldn’t have thought merited writing about. The Wall Street Journal recently had a piece about how many water bottles is too many water bottles. Good on that man who wrote the story about the number of reusable water bottles his daughter had collected in both her professional and personal life. Silly you think, until you realize you just came home with two reusable water bottles from a trip in the spring to Indonesia.
Keep a log of incidents, facts, or ideas. The author Matt Dicks has a whole life philosophy, Homework for Life, revolving around entering a few words in an Excel file about one thing that happens to you every day. He draws upon it for stories, articles, or his daily blog posts. Or just for reminding himself that life isn’t so ordinary.
I do all that (I keep journals although not religiously). But travel is what gives me the most ideas for writing. I’m serious about my travel journals (as opposed to when I’m home), but there’s more to it. There’s something about moving out into the world, immersing myself in nature, interacting with people. My brain just turns on. Sometimes the pieces fall together when I decide to do nothing more than leave my apartment to go get the groceries.
Travel stories are easier than other types of writing (or art) – you’re starting with some facts, not a blank document or canvas. I just have to decide which facts to keep in the story and how to put them together in an entertaining way. But a story works best when there’s some point to telling it. It might be that the travel episode is just funny, but the best stories are when there’s some lesson to learn. My most commented-on travel pieces are the ones with a distinct personal side to them.
Still, I’ve been struggling a bit this year to write, even about some of my travels. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve written so many successful travel stories that the latest one somehow has to live up to the previous ones. Sometimes I expect something amazing to happen, like when I go diving. Other times though I’m not thinking about it and something happens anyway.
Like when I took the train down to San Diego for a stay of about 10 days a couple weeks ago. I was invited to house sit for three of those days (the rest of the time was for an event taking place later in the week), to keep the loveliest of doggies company while her owners were away for a weekend. Just a few days of me alone with the dog in a quiet neighborhood, I wasn’t planning on anything to happen. I didn’t need to drive anywhere for food. I loaded up my stuff just in case. My computer, in case I got a project from a client. My paints, in case I had time to paint.
The first morning, I got up and took the dog out before 7:00, in my pajamas. I laughed at myself, thinking of all the dog owners I make fun of in Los Angeles on the beach walking their pets in their pajamas, year round. No one (I think) could see me in my pajamas, but I got it, it’s practical to be in your pajamas to get the dog out fast first thing in the morning.
Trivial event, but boom I had a title for one of my little paintings, “The goddess who walks her dog in her pajamas.” And you know what? That painting sold. A painting I wasn’t even going to post on social media. A routine activity that shouldn’t have registered with anyone and suddenly I made a sale.
Inspiration happened again only a few hours later. I was out playing with the dog in the yard when I noticed a young peach tree, planted just a year before, had cracked in half under the strain of the weight of the not-yet-ripe peaches. One half of the peach tree, peaches still attached, was lying on the ground. Now we were all worried about the other half, which fell just two days later. Even more almost ripe peaches to deal with.
Peaches turned up in everything. Peaches in my yogurt, peaches in my pancakes, peaches (grilled) in my arugula and burrata, peaches in my prosecco. And peaches just to eat peaches.
Not the kind of story you’re probably going to tell anyone, except your neighbor, the amazing gardener. Only a huge disappointment for the person who planted the tree and was waiting for their first harvest of peaches ripened on the tree. But there was something in that peach tree falling for me, a non-invested spectator. The broken peach tree and all the almost-ripened peaches gave me a reason to take a stab at an art lesson from a few months back for painting jam jars. I thought I could design a label for the preserves that would be made, and ended up with painted jars on paper of Broken Peach Tree Preserves, Fig Jelly, Too Many Lemons Marmalade, Magical Mango Chutney, Very Berry Jam.
And then the idea ballooned into something else – jars of various lotions for your face all under the imaginary brand of “goddess goop.” Now I have a pile of “goddess goop” paintings – goddess goop luscious lip cream, goddess goop peach day cream, goddess goop brow furrow eraser – and a lot of people online who want to purchase the imaginary products.
Some writers don’t need to leave home to find inspiration. Like Jerry Seinfeld making a show about nothing.
Even for fiction, I cannot rely on my imagination alone. I still draw on real life to make up my stories, meet cutes that may have happened to me in real life, but didn’t have the happy ending.
It all works best when I’m already trying to create the thing, whatever it is – a poem, a book, a painting, a joke. Maybe every day. That’s when the woo-woo stuff starts to happen. Early attempts might not be good, whatever good means, but then the neurons start to connect seemingly disparate ideas into something new. Science says there’s something to experience. Areas of the brains of seasoned writers different than in novices light up MRI while performing the same task.
If I had to say, inspiration can come from anywhere. You just have to train your brain to see it.
Books…
Norwegian Lessons in Indonesia (2023)
An Accidental Artist: Discovering Creativity through Scuba Diving (2018)
Art for sale at AnemoneWatch on Square
Janice Nigro 
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