Once “Lost”, How to be Found?

I love this arti­cle writ­ten by Carl­ton Cuse, one of the show run­ners of my favorite tele­vi­sion show of the last decade, “Lost.” In this arti­cle he faces a cri­sis many writ­ers, com­posers, and artists go through: Once you’ve done what is prob­a­bly the best work you will ever do, what do you do next?

I thought of this years ago after one of my com­po­si­tions was per­formed. I thought, “How will I ever top that?” My answer came from Beethoven, when I won­dered if he must not have felt, “How will I top the Moon­light Sonata? The Fifth Sym­phony?” Of course Beethoven did not stop com­pos­ing, and we have so many more musi­cal riches because of that; I’m sure I need hardly men­tion the Ninth Sym­phony, the Appas­sion­ata, ¬†and the late quartets.

So it is inter­est­ing to read Mr Cuse’s strug­gle with what to do next, now that “Lost” has wrapped up its run. As he puts it,

…even the most tal­ented among us, after an intense period of work on a project, strug­gle with the ques­tion, “What do I do next?”

Then there’s the typ­i­cal strug­gle of wondering

…what, if any­thing, would get me excited to go back to work.

My answer has always been to keep writ­ing, no mat­ter what. Keep the cre­ative habit going. Even­tu­ally you will find, as Mr. Cuse does here, that inspi­ra­tion comes when least expected and in the strangest of places.

The full arti­cle can be found by click­ing here.