On an unusual warm August night in the Stockholm archipelago a thought came to mind: What makes people feel inspired to do things? What has made me come up with photography projects, short stories I’d written in school or even the idea and inspiration to start my business?
How do you find inspiration? And how do you hold on to that spark long enough to actually go through with the initial idea?
I’m no stranger to experience unusual thoughts in the middle of the night, but on that particular summer night, all alone in a cabin when the nights still didn’t get completely dark in Sweden, I decided to do something with these thoughts. Most of the time I’d write them down in my phone and fall asleep. But not this time. I decided I’d write a blog post about it for my website. Strangely, the words came flooding and I found myself in what you could certainly call a flow. Somehow I even thought I sounded funny on paper. I don’t think I’m known for being funny, so this was peculiar. At around 2 in the morning my eyes had a hard time staying open so I thought I’d keep writing the next day and if I still thought that my words sounded good, maybe I’d be on to something.
So the next morning I looked through the pages and sure enough, it still sounded good enough to me. I hadn’t written anything like it before in my adult life. Sure, there were grammatical errors like you could expect from a night session and I was still on the fence on the funny stuff, so I let my then fiancée read it. He’s the funny one, so his reaction would sort of make it or break it for me. And somehow, he thought some of it was funny, too. So I published a blog post about it but kept coming up with ideas on how to find inspiration.
Then the book came to life. I spent many hours during the fall sitting outside on the deck by the water, just listening to nature and letting my mind wander. For months I kept writing and getting ideas. Yes, this was while I was still going to school to get a degree in psychology so there are definitely some psychological aspects of the book, but more importantly I’m a bit surprised I managed to do it all at the same time. It just goes to show how inspiration can make you do so much more than you thought would be possible.
This one of my favorite projects I have worked on. I hope you enjoy it too and I’d love to hear about which ideas worked for you!
You can find How to Find Inspiration here: https://payhip.com/b/2n4a and here: https://howtofindinspiration.com
Enjoy!
Charlotte Lundqvist Photography 