Advice for Beginners.

Developing your own, singular voice is part inspiration, part perspiration, part dreaming, and part doing something entirely different. Being truly inspired to create something often doesn't come from setting out to do that thing. Getting into that flow state, scientifically, means going through the stages of Struggle, Release, Flow, and Recovery. Struggling to do something usually leads to you taking a break, which leads to a kind of "aha" moment (whether it be about the thing you're working on or something else) taking you down whatever rabbit hole you've found, and then you take an actual break where you (generally) feel good about your accomplishments and get dinner or whatever. In other words: Moving at the Speed of Inspiration. You can't force flow, it happens. You can guide yourself to it but you can't "call upon it". In that flow state you're creating from within, not checking to see if your answer matches someone else's. Sometimes you have to wait for inspiration, the right time for the right project, for longer than you'd like. Sometimes deadlines force creativity, sometimes they force bad work. Only experience will tell you which is when.