WELCOME TO HOW-TO WEEK AT POWER LOVE!

Today's How-To: How to Find Inspiration

Recently, while spending my writing time staring into a void of nothingness, a place I like to call, "my blank slate," it occurred to me that inspiration is an elusive and, at times, bitchy partner in crime.

Sometimes she shows up and together you can pull off the grandest of trickery (er, I mean, stories); other times, she stays in bed, eating puffy Cheetos and reading fashion magazines, and then where are you? You're in Flat Character Contrived Plot Passive Verb Land.

Maybe you're not a writer--maybe you're a painter or a carpenter or a sculptor or a musician or any other artistically-inclined human, in which case, Flat Character Contrived Plot Passive Verb Land probably doesn't scare you much. But imagine hell with George W. Bush shackled to you and talking nonstop while you receive a neverending root canal, and you'll get where I'm coming from.

So, in an effort to support and advance Power Love's mission statement (Id qomo par breo, loosely translated: be kind always or shut the hell up), I will hereby explain how to find inspiration.

First, stare at things that are pleasing to your eye. Say you like the way the carpet looks in the hallway of your office. Stare at it. After a certain amount of time, you'll start to see shapes, more than likely a forest theme (trees gently shushing in the wind; ground cover crawling gracefully over, well, ground; wildflowers). Once you do--congratulations! You've just hallucinated without paying your drug dealer exorbitant prices for exotic club drugs.

Second, sit in a park. Look at trees and grass and, if you're in the city, someone else's dog as it pees on a post. Allow nature's wonders to fill your soul.

To recap, in order to find inspiration, stare at plants a lot.