Stumbling on Inspiration

I've been struggling to rework a short story of mine, I knew what I had to change and how I wanted to change but the words were stuck in my head and would not come out on to paper. I tried a couple of different methods and managed to piece together some stuff but overall was feeling a tad frustrated. So I let it breathe for a while.

Today I switched on the TV today to stumble across Jonathon Demme's Documentary Neil Young Heart of Gold. I like a lot of what Neil Young has done from his Buffalo Springfield days to CSNY to most of his solo output. I remember hearing a couple of tracks off the album that is the main focus of this doco and thinking it sounded good but never buying it for whatever reason. As I was watching I opened up my laptop and pulled up the story because watching the film made me want to create. I can't do it with musical notes but I can use words. It was like the film and music had flipped a switch in my mind and the words started to come. This initial rush is so satisfying and from there I was able to work out some kinks in the tale and get some stuff down that I'd been wrestling with inside my head.

Now it's not quite done yet but it's getting there and that's what important. It's so easy to forget that writing is a craft like anything else when you grew up reading Kerouac and how whatever went on to the page was what should stay on it. It's taken me years to go past this myth and realize that like anything in life you have to work hard at it and slowly it will come together.