Inspiration is Fickle

A person can be creative and productive without being inspired, but its not a lot of fun.  Inspiration is not just coming up with an idea but something that makes you glow because you know that idea is a good one and its not just work but something that adds value to the human experience.  

From 2006 to 2012 I felt inspired working within a creative community and feeling my ideas were good ones worth following through to completion.  The production process was relatively easy and there was a lot of collaboration, feedback and support/encouragement in both the production process and the finished product.

Then that inspiration tailed off.  From 2012 to 2021 I tended to search for ideas that would keep me involved in the creative world but I focused more on family, work and other hobbies (i.e. video games).  There were projects (Kid Millions, the TMU Movie, Gentrified) and events (organizing community movie nights) but they often felt more like work than fun.  The slow demise of TMU likely had a lot to do with this.

In 2019 I set a goal to learn the basics of Blender modeling and followed through spending two years creating many 3d models and posting them on my Reallusion marketplace store.  Im not particularly talented at this but its a good skill to have.  And it did not inspire but it earned enough to buy some assets for my own productions and to upgrade the Iclone software when it came time.

In 2021 I set a new goal to write scripts.  I've never written formal scripts before.  At best a few of my shorts had the dialog written down with general story descriptions so that I could give something to the VO actors.  So I bought some books on formatting and some books on story construction (save the cat had been idle in my bookshelf for many years) and spent a few months studying up.  By the end of 2021 I had drafted a series of short scripts.  From those scripts I've created 5 Minutes to Heaven and I'm now working on the first episode of Lonely.  And I'm currently going through another round of writing projects.

Its nice to get something from your mind to a physical form.  Writing is not easy and I'm not very good at it but the technical threshold is low (compared to 3D software) and once you have the idea hammered out you can get it to script pretty fast.   I also joined a small community that holds very low stakes writing contests that I've found very positive. 

And truth be told I'm feeling a bit inspired again.

I'll save the details on some of these short scripts and perhaps my own writing process for later posts but it feels good to be inspired.  However, I know that inspiration is fickle so for now I'll ride the wave as long as it lasts.