Why Creativity Is a Black Cat That Walks Wherever It Wants
People often think that the main problem for a writer is inspiration.
To some extent, that’s true.
My inspiration can depend on my mood.
For example, I usually write when I feel inspired and creatively full, and sometimes I don’t feel like writing at all.
And sometimes I sit down and have no idea what to write about, but somewhere along the way, the text creates itself.
I feel like I’m unraveling a ball of yarn — one thought pulls another, then another, and another…
But as much as I love writing,
I absolutely love creating visuals too.
I love generating images with AI, editing videos, and making funny memes.
And when I create visuals, that’s when I actually feel recharged.
Seeing my ideas come to life in beautiful images and videos gives me enormous pleasure.
That’s why I usually try to make a carousel for every essay.
I feel like it gives my ideas a finished form.
And that’s a special kind of pleasure.
Creative people are like children, and we treat every project like a child of our own.
The joy we get from each project is like the joy of a child who has finally built a tower out of blocks.
***
There are days when I have no inspiration or desire to write.
My daughter is a teenager, and sometimes we argue.
After that, sometimes inspiration just leaves me.
I used to think I had to sit down and have an idea.
As if ideas were employees you could hire through a job ad.
As if I could open my laptop at 9:00 a.m., make myself comfortable, drink coffee, stare at the blank page, and say:
“Okay. You can come in now.”
Sometimes I even had a deadline.
Which, apparently, was exactly when my brain decided to develop a completely different personality.
Nothing.
Not one interesting thought.
Not one sentence worth keeping.
Just me, a blinking cursor, and the growing suspicion that I had somehow forgotten how to write.
If only ideas could come on command.
Or if there were some magic pill for attracting ideas.
Unfortunately, there isn’t.
If it were that easy, talented marketers, designers, and managers wouldn’t be so highly sought after.
***
Everyone has their own way of finding inspiration.
You just have to figure out how it works for you.
People often say that you need to let go and what is meant for you will come to you on its own.
To some extent, that works with inspiration too.
And then, usually when you stop trying, an idea appears.
Try it.
It can happen anywhere, as soon as you stop racing and allow yourself to simply feel the day.
In the shower.
While washing dishes.
When you’re falling asleep.
In the middle of a completely unrelated conversation.
While walking somewhere and thinking about absolutely nothing.
Especially when you’re thinking about nothing and simply allowing fresh air to fill all the space inside you.
Because ideas don’t come where there is no empty space.
They wait for you to make room for them.
***
Sometimes an idea arrives as a single sentence.
Sometimes as a strange connection between two things that have nothing to do with each other.
Sometimes it’s just a feeling:
Wait.
There is something here.
And suddenly, I know what I want to write about.
That’s when I feel like I’ve found the end of the thread and can start unraveling the ball.
Not because I forced it.
Because I finally stopped forcing it.
Ideas don’t always appear when we ask for them.
More often, the opposite happens.
You’re sitting in a restaurant having lunch, and suddenly it taps you on the shoulder:
I’m here.
Write me down on a napkin.
***
There is something very strange about creativity.
Although maybe it isn’t strange at all.
Nothing good comes easily.
The harder you try to produce an idea, the more obvious it becomes that you cannot actually order your mind to have one.
I like comparing ideas to a black cat that walks wherever it wants.
You can create the conditions.
You can read other writers to get inspired.
You can observe.
You can even ask Google.
You can write regularly.
You can collect fragments.
You can pay attention.
But you cannot always say:
“Today at 3:17 p.m., I need my best idea.”
The brain doesn’t work like that.
It keeps processing things when we aren’t consciously working on them.
The black cat comes when it wants to, not when you call it.
But it comes where it feels comfortable.
Sometimes all you need to do is relax and allow yourself not to think.
And voilà.
Your brain suddenly remembers something on its own.
A sentence you read three days ago.
Something someone said.
A memory you almost forgot.
A question you never answered.
A feeling you couldn’t name.
A completely ridiculous thought that seemed meaningless at the time.
And then, in that moment, they meet.
And suddenly, there is an idea.
This is why some of my best thoughts have arrived when I wasn’t trying to write anything at all.
I was living.
And apparently, living is part of the writing process too.
The most flavorful texts are born from our own lives, not someone else’s.
Because that’s what we can actually taste and describe in a way no one else can.
We can be inspired by other people’s stories, but we can’t tell them in a way that feels alive unless we add our own emotions, like adding spices.
Bland food isn’t delicious.
***
We have become very good at treating every pause as a failure.
If we don’t have an idea,
we assume we’re stuck.
Creative people can even turn it into a whole drama.
If we don’t feel inspired, we assume we’ve lost our creativity.
If we don’t produce something today, we feel guilty.
But we can’t lose our talent.
As we say in my country,
“You can’t drink your talent away.”
We may simply not be ready to share it with the world today.
But our lives don’t end today.
We just need to understand that.
But maybe sometimes nothing is wrong.
Maybe the idea is still forming.
Maybe your mind is doing something you cannot see yet.
We forget that there is a difference between nothing happening and nothing happening that you can see yet.
A seed doesn’t look very impressive while it is underground.
That doesn’t mean nothing is happening.
I think ideas can be like that.
They’re just not ready yet.
They need somewhere quiet to form.
And sometimes that quiet looks suspiciously like procrastination.
Sometimes it looks like taking a walk with the dog on the beach.
Sometimes it looks like making coffee with cinnamon and drinking it slowly by the window.
Sometimes it looks like staring out the window for twenty minutes.
Allowing yourself to think about absolutely nothing.
Sometimes it looks like suddenly remembering something from ten years ago for absolutely no apparent reason.
And sometimes it looks like doing something completely unrelated to your work.
Then, out of nowhere:
Oh.
There it is.
***
The funniest part is that ideas rarely arrive when everything is perfectly organized.
They don’t care about your schedule.
They don’t check your calendar.
They don’t wait until you have opened your laptop.
They have terrible timing.
You can be half asleep and suddenly think:
I need to write this down.
You can wake up at four in the morning with an idea in your head that won’t let you sleep.
You can be grocery shopping and suddenly understand the ending of an article you’ve been struggling with for three days.
You can be brushing your teeth and suddenly find the exact sentence you’ve been trying to write all morning.
And then you stand there with toothpaste in your mouth thinking:
Seriously? Now?
Yes.
Now.
Because your mind was probably working on it while you were busy doing something else.
***
So I stopped chasing every idea.
I just live and try to taste life.
I still write things down.
Actually, I write them down immediately.
Because I have learned the hard way that “I’ll remember this later” is one of the biggest lies the human brain tells itself.
A sentence can feel brilliant at 11:43 p.m.
By morning, it has disappeared into another dimension.
So now I keep notes.
Fragments.
Titles.
Questions.
One sentence.
Sometimes just three words.
I don’t always know what they mean yet.
I don’t need to.
Some of them become articles.
Some become paragraphs.
Some stay there for months.
Some never become anything.
And that’s okay too.
Not every thought needs to become content.
Not every idea needs to be monetized.
Not every moment of inspiration needs to become a finished product.
Inspiration doesn’t like being monetized.
It likes being shared.
And sometimes it doesn’t want to be available to everyone at all.
You can create something just for yourself and never show it to the world.
That doesn’t make your creativity any less valuable.
Some of the most talented creators became famous only after their deaths, and before that, no one had seen their paintings or read their poems.
Sometimes our creativity heals us first.
And that’s okay too.
Some thoughts are allowed to simply exist.
***
Creativity Needs a Little Space.
I think this is especially important when you create for the internet.
There is always pressure to produce.
You have to keep up with everything!
The algorithms are constantly changing!
Post something!
Write something!
Say something!
Have an opinion!
Have a strategy!
Be consistent!
Be visible!
Record a talking-head video!
Get yourself out of the frame immediately — that’s not trendy anymore!
Keep going!
Inspiration doesn’t like a race.
And eventually, creativity can start feeling like a factory.
But I don’t want my mind to become a factory.
That makes me uncomfortable.
I want it to remain a place where unexpected things can happen.
Because the ideas I love most are rarely the ones I sat down and demanded from myself.
They are the ones that surprised me.
The ones that interrupted an ordinary moment.
The ones that made me stop and think:
Wait.
I have never looked at it that way before.
Those are the ideas worth following.
They don’t always get a lot of likes on Instagram.
But they almost always get picked up for publication, and that matters more to me than likes.
***
There is a difference between discipline and force.
Discipline says:
“I’ll show up.”
Force says:
“I’ll make something happen right now.”
I can show up to the page without knowing what I’m going to say.
I can read without knowing what I’m looking for.
I can live my day without turning every experience into a lesson.
I can let my mind wander.
And I can trust that something will eventually connect.
Maybe not today.
Maybe not tomorrow.
Maybe while I’m doing the dishes or hugging my daughter.
And honestly?
I’m starting to like that.
Because creativity is much more interesting when it still has the ability to surprise me.
Your best idea may not arrive when you schedule it.
It may arrive when you’re not looking for it at all.
So leave a little room for that.
Go outside.
Take a shower.
Make coffee.
Talk to the people you love.
Read a story you loved as a child.
Watch your favorite movie — the one you could watch over and over again without ever getting tired of it.
Live a little.
The idea might already be on its way.
It just doesn’t know that you have a deadline.
Maybe it’s waiting for the moment when you stop waiting.
Because what is truly yours comes to you on its own when you let go.
No one can take your ideas away from you.
That’s it.
—
This post was previously published on The Quiet Corner.
***
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