"I'm waiting for inspiration to strike me ... "

How about I do it instead?  No, seriously, we've all been there.  We've waited for the muse to find us, to whisper those golden words in our ears and give us the next Gone With the Wind or the new Superman or whatever may fire up not only our own imagination, but that of our audience.

Well, muses ride the wind and no one can steer the breeze.  If you have the desire to write, to create, you can't wait for inspiration to find you.  You have to hunt it down.  You must pursue it like with the ferocity of a bounty hunter, grip it by the throat, and drag it back to your writing alcove.

Inspiration is all around you.  I remember meeting writer/artist Nicola Cuti (then part of the Charlton Comics editorial staff and writer/creator of the classic character E-Man) back in the '70s and asked the usual lame question, "Where do you get your crazy ideas?"  He told me that he read newspapers, watched the evening news, followed real world events.  Then he applied his character to the situation and let the story evolve from there.  How did this character react to the situation?  How did the situation change as a result of the character's intervention?  How would this particular character resolve the problems generated by roadblocks generated as a result of his actions?

Even if you watch nothing but reality TV or read comic books or listen to the radio, there's still plenty of inspiration to be found.  Turn a familiar situation into something strange and exotic.  For instance, one of my favorite comic book series from the '80s was a title called normalman (written and illustrated by Jim Valentino) where a baby was rocketed from a dying planet to another where everyone except him possessed powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.  There was also a very short-lived television series in the Seventies produced by Norman Lear called All That Glitters.  The premise was that women were the alpha gender and males faced limited opportunities and sexual exploitation.  Also, more than one book has been written where Professor Moriarty was the protagonist who faced challenges from his oppressor, Sherlock Holmes.

So do some mental plotting exercises for your own amusement.  How might a retired consulting detective react to the alarms aboard the Titanic?  How does a man ask for what he knows are the winning State Lottery numbers when he has tetraphobia?  What if a maid discovered her sister was a prostitute whose client worked for the Secret Service?  See where this could go?

Nothing wrong with waiting for your muse.  But the muscles of the imagination grow stronger through use.  Like opportunity, inspiration is unlikely to seek you out, but there's nothing wrong with hunting it down and making it work for you.