I get inspired the same way I learned to write—by doing it. When I was a kid, I just wrote because nothing was standing between me and a blank page of onion-skin typing paper loaded into a Smith Corona typewriter.In high school, two friends and I started a story in Mr. Canary’s American History class. I’d write a paragraph, then one of them would, then the other, and it kept going like that for two years across different classes and notebooks. That chain taught me that a story could live beyond a single voice and that momentum beats inspiration every time.
I used to be a writer, and the best thing about it was that there was no expectation; I wrote, and no one expected anything. It was private work—messy drafts, late-night notes, parcels of thought I could toss out or keep without explanation. That freedom is the engine of getting better: you try things that look stupid on the page, you fail fast, and you learn what’s worth rescuing. There’s a calm in knowing nobody’s billing you for your honest mistakes.
United States District Court Orders OHV Route Closures in the West Mojave Desert
Volunteers and towers still catch small ignitions early — a human, practical layer that many agencies have let lapse.