@Cognessence Hell yeah! Genuine Inspiration is great, but the doing of the thing actually fosters inspiration more than anything else, at least for me.

Habit is essential. Even when I'm spent or not feeling like I'm being original, just playing around is fun and can (but not always) lead to real creative progress.

@d01 That's a good point! Inspiration isn't linear. And it does seem as if sometimes inspiration is less a prerequisite than a byproduct. The act itself can generate the conditions for it, rather than the other way around.

But even when it doesn’t, something has still been explored - some territory mapped out, however small - which surely accumulates over time in a way that waiting never does.

I also like what you said about habit; habit as a kind of infrastructure that inspiration gets to travel on. As you said, it's also good to not always take instruction from that feeling of being spent, or not feeling original - or any self-critical voices arising mid-process. I’ve rarely seen them contain much real insight into what’s actually being made!

One way I found around that (still have plenty of other issues lol - but less so this one) was a kind of deliberate suspension of judgement - or the thought that "music is always happening; sometimes I get to be part of it." It helps to actually believe in letting sounds be sounds; there is this great sonic flux, and we get to draw from and contribute to it in some way, whether that be along more traditional, conventionally musical lines or the furthest opposites from that. Either way, something is added back into the stream, which seems inherently interesting in itself!