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Anyone who tells you inspiration comes naturally is lying.

Example: If you’re not a painter, you’d never get a sudden epiphany of “the perfect painting.” It takes time and effort to get near enough to a subject to let it influence your brain (And subsequently, your ideas). Even then, it might not.

I’ve been trying to capture inspiration for years and have never gotten a hold of it. As a kid I could come up with so many ideas, it makes my head spin. I made comics about owl-themed superheroes, tokusatsu-adjacent space warriors, and humans sucked into the “lego world.” My greatest creative endeavor was designing monsters, with the crown jewel being this: A purple dinosaur with a transparent belly that fills up with poop. Naturally, this is so the dinosaur can tell when he has to use the bathroom.

Speaking of painting, maybe the hardest I've grappled with inspiration was in middle school. Very new to the expression, I wanted to paint something “adult” for the big art-class exhibition. Enough poop monsters, what about something mature? Like a helicopter! The idea kinda stunk, I couldn’t paint helicopters, and I was in way over my head. In hindsight, my art teacher tried to gently correct me, but I was just too stubborn to make the damn idea work.

Today, I never try to force inspiration. I’ll gently prod at an idea for a story (i.e. a spoof of 12 Angry Men called 12 Angry Gamers) with a long stick. If it's worth anything, I’ll run with it. If not, then it joins the ranks of a thousand other documents with half a page of notes written in Arial, black, 11 pt font. The stick is long so that I don’t get too attached.

I still can’t really tell where my ideas come from. I’d love to say they’re from everyday life, or the songs of sparrows, or something romantic like that. In truth, most are from dreams. Dreams asleep, or dreams awake. I have a thousand unwritten stories in Word, but infinite unfinished ideas in my head, just bouncing around. When I think, I think in Arial, black, 11 pt font.

Sometimes I miss purple dinosaurs and green sludge monsters though.