I’m one of those people who makes usable things only when my mind is flipped on and tuned to a very specific channel. Often for good reasons, like breathless laughter or an uncharacteristic bout of evil glee, but just as often because something is gnawing on me. It’s never “hmm I think I’ll have a cup of tea and work on my values study.” That would be nice, but it’s just not how I work. That’s just practice. For a finished piece I care about and will go through the effort to try to make perfectly, a switch needs to flip.
The absolute best switch to flip, and I will recommend this to anyone, is when you think about an idea and you’re not sure, and maybe you’re feeling a little muddled, or you are overthinking it, and suddenly you just feel this welling up in your chest and you say “fuck it.”
That’s the cue. You’ve only got a minute or two. Swap out whatever crummy supplies you have been toying with and pull in the good stuff. Get yourself ready to record audio, or flip on the lights, or break out the camera, or grab the palette knife because whatever your next move is, it needs to be archival quality. You’re going to want to save it. It might not be something you can market and sell. It might not be something you can even finish. But it’s time to preserve whatever you’re about to do so that you can hit that state over and over again, getting faster and freer with your inspiration and smoothing your own way.
This is why you learn your craft, build your skill, study your technique. This is why you stock your materials. This is why when you realize you really like the texture or look of something or a turn of phrase you came up with some day, you should make sure it’s accessible again, that you understand it, that you’re ready to shape it. Because instead of an eventual product, you’re about to make something wild and wonderful, and the benefit of professional experience is how quickly and clearly you’re going to translate that passing momentary desire to make EXACTLY what you’re imagining into an actual finished piece. When you know how to plot out a novel of a particular length and can just start writing into a familiar structure, and when you know exactly the bottle of glimmering blue ink you want to feature, and when you have a comfortable place to work and can clear your schedule and just CREATE something, you’re ready for this moment.
Because the secret, unspoken whole phrase is actually “fuck it, today I’m going to make what *I* want.” There’s no more powerful form of inspiration than the chance to just will something into existence one day which would otherwise never be.