One of the biggest myths about making art is that inspiration is a necessary ingredient. People who don’t make art often glorify it. Sometimes even artists do.

Most often, inspiration comes and goes. Unpredictably. Randomly. There are days when making art is the most marvelous thing on earth. There are few things as joyful as flowing in a river of creativity.

And then there are days when making art just can’t fit into your hectic schedule, much less feel inspired.

The key to a successful art career isn’t manipulating your circumstances or yourself to increase your communication with the Muses.

The best approach to inspiration is non-attachment. Appreciate the moments and days when you feel fueled by passion, even as you acknowledge that they’re fleeting.

Your job is to show up and just keep making the art and building your business.

People who build successful art careers aren’t more inspired than other artists; they’re more committed.

They keep showing up at the easel or wheel or behind the camera, even when they don’t really want to. Even when they feel about as inspired as a pair of old socks.

Keep showing up. Sometimes, inspiration will meet you there.

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What’s your experience of inspiration? Do you depend upon it to produce your work? Are there any tricks you’ve discovered to stay in the inspired zone? I’d love to hear about it….

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If you liked this blog post, you may really like what Robert Fritz had to say about the creative process at this year’s smARTist conference. Check it out.

In my book The Path of Least Resistance, I describe two distinct orientations: Reactive/Responsive and Creative/Generative.

Reactive/Responsive is when circumstances are the driving force in your life. You either react against or respond to the situation. The circumstances, rather than your aspirations and values, are the driving force.  Most of us were raised to be reactive/responsive. In fact, we are told that we have made progress if we move from reacting against to responding to the circumstances. But there is little difference when the circumstances are in control.

The Creative/Generative orientation is vastly different. Here the driving force is not the situation you are in, but your desires, your aspirations, your vision, and your values.

Most artists are in a creative/generative orientation when they make their art.  They organize their actions around the vision they have for the piece they are making.  They compare their vision with the current state of the work, and then they take strategic actions to bring the current state of the work to the desired outcome they envision.

But when it comes to career and business, they fall back into a reactive/responsive orientation.  It doesn’t occur to them to use the very same creative process that is so effective in their art in the rest of their lives.

The great advantage artists have is they have mastered their own creative process – the most successful process for accomplishment in history.  Most non-artists have little understanding of what it takes to bring a creation into being.  But this is the stock in trade of every artist.

Ironically, artists often don’t know what they have.  The creative process may be a result of unconscious competence and innate talent.  They know how to create intuitively, so they are not consciously aware of their own creative process. Yet, all artists strive to grow their talents.  The reason for this is that their artistic vision often outpaces their technique.

This motivates learning, discipline, innovation, creativity, experimentation, and, in the end, what was once only intuitive, becomes both intuitive and conscious awareness of the creative process.

For an artist to move from a reactive/responsive to a generative/creative orientation in his or her life-building process is profound transformation.  Suddenly the division between your artistic life and your personal and professional life is gone.

Everything, including your own life, becomes the subject matter of the creative process: a work in progress.

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If you want to hear more from Robert Fritz, he will be presenting “Your Life as Art” on January 25th at the smARTist Telesummit 2010. Click here for all the details.