Where Do Ideas Come From?

I have always been fascinated by the idea of getting ideas. Where do they come from? Is it me who creates or does the creation creates itself through me? I have pondered this question throughout my life, especially when I was in grad school.

Gathered around a bonfire, I hung out with my fellow classmates, smoking weed, and talking about how much we loved creativity. The irony was that none of us were creating anything, we were just getting high and critiquing all the bad TV shows that got funded, all the bad films that got into festivals, all the bad novels that somehow got published. We hated all those successful creatives that got their things made. But what were we doing? We were waiting, waiting for great ideas to come to us, great concepts to appear in front of us, great inspiration to arrive at our doorsteps, so that we could turn them into films, TV shows, novels, web series, and interactive exhibits. But the problem was that those great ideas weren’t coming.

In the second week of my grad school, I met up with one of the professors I admired. He had produced some of the top entertainment shows in Canada, had received multiple Emmy Awards, and was once spotted smoking weed with Woody Harrelson during a film shoot. “How do I come up with a great idea?” I asked him. “How did you get your last great idea?” he adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses. I told him that every night, my friends and I brainstorm, we come up with many ideas, but the following day when we review them, they appear ridiculous. “Maybe we need better weed,” I laughed. But my professor didn’t. He got up, pulled out a book from his shelf, and passed it to me. “Read this,” he said, “and follow exactly what it says,” he smiled.

That book was The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. And it changed my life.

Before I read that book, I believed that I always came up with great ideas, I was creative, I was talented. Because those were the messages that were put into my head since I was a child. My teachers, my parents, my friends, my neighbors, even my dentist told me once how talented I was when he saw me scribbling on a piece of paper napkin in his office. Growing up, I came up with lots of great ideas, and I got recognized for them. But when I got older, I somehow got blocked. I wondered why was it so easy for me to come up with ideas when I was a child, but now that I was more experienced, more knowledgeable, more creative, the ideas didn’t come as often and as easily as they used to.

As artists, we put so much pressure on our selves. We want to create things that are better than our previous creations, better than our fellow creators, better than everyone. But when we can’t, we blame ourselves, we doubt ourselves, and we start to hate ourselves.

Children tend to follow their instincts more than their ego, so creation comes natural to them. It’s when we grow up, the flow gets blocked. I love this quote by George Bernard Shaw: “We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” We start thinking, we start analyzing, we start comparing ourselves to successful artists. And we stop playing.

That’s all great, you might say, but then where do ideas really come from?

They come from another plane. The ancient Greeks believed in muses, particularly in the Goddesses of Inspiration; the nine muses who ruled over the arts and sciences and offered inspiration in those subjects. They were the daughters of Zeus, lord of all gods, and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. All the great artists of that era invoked those goddesses, to create their best work. You can call them goddesses, god, Creative Force, names don’t really matter. What matters is your conviction that you are nobody, your creations don’t come from you, they come from elsewhere.

“Eternity is in love with the creations of time”- William Blake.

Eternity is the source of our ideas. The goddesses, the muses, the angels, they bring us those ideas. All we need to do is show up every day. Since reading The War of Art, I haven’t struggled much with the challenge of getting new ideas, because I show up every day, to receive the gift. I am a vessel through which creativity flows. I am not the source. I am just an artist.

Here’s what I do every day. Before I start my work, regardless of the nature of the medium I’m working with, I invoke the muses.

Inspired by a prayer Steven Pressfield uses, I read this every morning before I start creating:

I am not the source of any of the work I produce.

The work comes from another plane.

I’m the conduit.

I’m the human voice.

But the source lies elsewhere.

I can’t compel the work to happen.

I can’t make the goddess deliver.

I can’t bribe her, or coerce her, or grovel before her, or make her any pledges or promises that will induce her to do what I wish.

I can only invoke her.

It is my hope that this helps you as much as it has helped me, not just in the process of your creations, but in enjoying life’s serendipity, the magical moments that will unfold in front of you everyday. This method, this belief, this conviction has changed my life. Creativity is a gift from God, and our use of it everyday is a gift back to God.

The muses will bring the ideas, the inspiration, the aha moments to you, but only if you show up to do the work. Every. Single. Day.