Write in the moment of inspiration (don't wait)

For me, a lot of writing anything good comes from writing in the moment of inspiration.

For example, if you're in the middle of a conversation and you're really getting to the root of the matter and the other person is asking good questions. And you have a realization that you haven't had before. Ideally, you want to write down your realization right in that moment. If you have to interrupt the conversation, you can ask the other person, "Hey, that was really good. Do you mind if I write that down?"

Conversation is writing

Even better, you can just record the whole conversation. I've been doing this a lot lately. I bought these two little microphones. There's one for you and one for the other person. You can clip them on your shirt, so you don't need to hold anything. Don't use the voice memos app on your phone. Use Otter—it transcribes the audio automatically.

There is something magic about the moment of inspiration.

It's the surrounding environment, the sound, how you're feeling, who you're with. All of these factors contribute to the idea, the words, the art in whatever form it's being expressed.

It's ephemeral. It's like a flower wilting at warp speed.

More flowers will bloom, sure. Every moment is succeeded by another moment.

But some moments are more than others in terms of how much they inspire you in a way that drives you to create. Those moments are rare and valuable.

So the first part of creating in the moment is just realizing when the moment is happening. It's hard to explain this part. You feel it. You say "wow" when you're looking at a beautiful scene. You get a tingly electric sensation in all the nerves in your body when you're looking at your lover and you realize you actually love them. You're dissociating from your body in the coffee shop because you've overdosed on caffeine and the mere thought of death is scary as hell.

You won't realize it immediately. First, you'll just be in it. The sensory info will get to your body and then to your brain and then you'll just be feeling it for the first few milliseconds.

You could be in it for full minutes before you realize, wait, wow, this is something. I want to share this.

The biggest mistake that people always make is they think they can capture it later. And so they wait to say it, write it down, draw it. They tell themselves, "Oh, I'll remember." But you won't remember. It won't be the same.

And even taking notes isn't enough.

You have to actually make the art right then and there. Get all the details. Overwrite in the moment. You can edit later.

Trying to write at the dance club

The easiest way to capture in the moment is with your phone. You always have it with you and it's a crazy powerful device in terms of its ability to capture in multiple forms of media—words, sound, images. You can type with your thumbs, record your voice, record other sounds, take pictures.

Now, there's one huge caveat to all this.

I'm guilty of ruining my own enjoyment of a good moment by rushing to render it into art.

Sometimes I even ruin moments for others. I'll be out on a date with my girlfriend having a good time and it gets so good that I have to write about it, but it lets the air out of the balloon and things get flat when I have my phone out and I'm in my own creative world inside my head.

Life is short. You only get so many moments. It's a fun life experience to make art and share it with others. But you can keep some moments for yourself. The uninterrupted moment has intrinsic value, even if you're the only one who gets to experience it. Not everything needs to be captured.