Curation + Inspiration

Think lightning can’t strike twice? Think again!

The Empire State Building gets struck by lightning about 25 times a year and the shuttle pad at Cape Canaveral sometimes gets hit more than once during the same storm.

Creative Lightning can also strike lots of people at the same time.

Screenwriters often see movies in the theater that are similar to their unproduced scripts. Multiple novelists dream up similar characters and plots. Musicians in different bands create matching melodies. Fashion designers design similar runway looks. Even scientists have been known to make complementary scientific breakthroughs at almost the exact same time.

Nature has a way of warning us loud and clear when lightning is in the air. It’s called thunder and we know to pay attention when we hear it.

But how do you know when Creative Lightning is gonna strike so you can be ready for it, too?

I was speaking to a children’s book author over the weekend, picking her brain for tips and advice as I prepare to publish my own children’s books this year. And we both agreed that when we were most creative, when we produced our best work, it didn’t feel like work at all but more like someone or something was controlling our hands and writing those words through us.

And we both believe that if we weren’t there ready and waiting to write’em down, those flashes of creativity would have found their way to someone else who WAS ready for them — just like lightning will always find its way to the ground without being too particular about what it uses to get there.

Did you know that lightning has no idea what it’s going to hit until the last 50 to 100 feet?

Nope.

It zig and it zags, going up and down and over and left and right until a grounded telephone pole, a tree, or even a person on a golf course, sends an opposite charge shooting upward.

This upward charge is called a streamer and whichever streamer makes contact with the descending lightning first gets hit.

So if you want to get hit with Creative Lightning you better be sending out a streamer.

And you send out a streamer when you’re ready and welcoming. By putting your butt in the chair as Stephen King and Margaret Atwood advise or showing up in the laboratory or putting in your time in the studio.

And then –and this is important! — staying there long enough to get into Flow.

You also cooperate with Creative Lightning by accepting any lightning bolt willing to connect with your streamer — the good and the bad, the brilliant and the boring. Just remember that for every dazzling dance step Martha Graham put on stage she discarded dozens of others that weren’t so dazzling. And this is true of all artists.

I firmly believe that we’re all creative and that all the brilliant ideas swimming in the ether are accessible by anyone — and that means YOU, too. They’re just waiting for you to be a Creative Lighting Rod when Creative Storms hit.

Of course, lightning — the non-creative kind — is a powerful force of nature and shouldn’t be messed with. So be sure to bring out today’s VPOD, a vintage 1970s Italian umbrella only AFTER a thunderstorm has passed.

It’s a fashionable bright spot in a storm for a Vintage Crusader.

Available at Gibson Girl Vintage.

(Image Credit: Fun EZ Photography by ViaMoi on Flickr | Reference Source: WeatherImagery.com | To receive the VPOD free via email with detailed size and price information, sign up for the growing email mailing list here. Your information will never be sold or shared and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.)