Inspiration: why it sucks

It's the standard: you have to be inspired to write. So what happens when the inspiration packs up and leaves? Does that mean you're no longer a writer?

For August and the first couple of weeks into September, I was stuck in the literary equivalent of becalmed seas. My novel bored me. Not all of it, but definitely the bit I was supposed to be working on. My short stories bored me.

And then I went to Iceland for two weeks. For two glorious weeks I didn't write anything. I was hiking and gaping and sitting in hot pools (called hot pots) and eating fish and learning the difference between aspirated and non aspirated "th" sounds. For those two weeks, I felt the joys of observing and listening and tasting. Those things I keep telling my writing students about. When in doubt, return to the five senses.

And there was so much to sense. From the restaurant built from an 19th century sailing ship in Isafjord, to the Northern Lights in Egilstaddir; from the stomach-clutching steep drive down into Seydisfjordur to the beautiful pools at Vok; from the seals playing among the ice floes to the tiny brown birds that peered at us from the branches of dwarf birches.

Inspiration isn't always about writing. Anyone who tells you that is a notty notty person.

Inspiration is allowing your brain to breathe.

The writing will come, as it always does, in its own sweet time. Meanwhile, enjoy that inhaling and exhaling thing. Wildly underrated.