I slapped my head today, why? I had zero inspiration. It has been a bit of a hectic week and inspiration and I have been very far from each other. I think I managed to put down one blog post that had been lingering in my drafts for a while now, but other than that I have been completely lacking in the writing department. Then today I decided I'd work this brain and lucky me I found today's #inleo prompt and it resonated with me

How do I get inspiration for my posts? The answer to this is never a straightforward thing. For me, inspiration is not a straight line. It just comes, it could be when someone just says something to me, sometimes I could just see something occur and an idea flies into my head, other times it happens when I allow my mind to wander and sit one one-on-one with my thoughts (I usually don't like this, but at times it can be quite enlightening). I usually take notes whenever an idea comes up so that I won't forget about them. I am always brimming with ideas, what I often lack is motivation.

Having the idea is often the driving force for a lot of the things that I write, but a lot of the time it comes, I write a little, then it fades away and I am left with only the determination to complete it. Though they're some exceptions like when I am simply narrating experiences or when I am in my feels and cooking up some deep fiction. But other than that I tend to have fleeting motivation. In order to keep myself going though there are some things I love to induce that motivation and they work for me a lot of the time.

The first one is listening to music. I put in my earpods, reduce the volume slightly and leave just enough for the song to serve as background music. It gives this writing a masterpiece vibe that sets the mood and keeps me motivated enough to keep going.

Then when music doesn't work I go ahead and read. Something about reading the works of my favourite authors motivates me to want to write as well. It's not easy to explain, but it's just what it is.

Another thing I do to keep myself motivated is give myself a deadline. For this one though there has to be an actual deadline for it to work, maybe an appointment to do something with someone, or an IOU to cash in. My brain has this internal stress alarm and it won't let me rest until I complete the task, there's even been times I have slept out of exhaustion and found myself waking up at just the right time to meet up with the deadline. But when I set fake deadlines it doesn't work.

Then I also found that I get motivated when I do challenges with friends. I am very competitive and whether or not I win whenever I set up a challenge with a friend concerning writing I am more inclined to write. Today is one of those days, I'd probably not have written today If I hadn't participated in a challenge. And though I lost with flying colors I am still happy cause at least I got to write.

So, yeah that's about it for me, I am a basket of inspiration, not so much with motivation, but I am working on that consciously and I see its rewards from time to time so that is good.

THANKS FOR READING

_{Cover Image by Jem Sahagun from Unsplash}

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