I guess it's similar to how novelists must feel when people come up to them with these romantic notions of what it means to be a writer assuming inspiration falls from the sky without any kind of deliberation on their part. . .


As a writer, inspiration actually does just seem to come out of the blue once in a while for me. But actually writing something that people enjoy or are interested in (or hell even if they openly mock and insult it, there's no such thing as bad publicity and they are just indirectly helping me sell my books), I am kind of in this zen balancing act of using my own unique perception combined with an empathetic understanding of how other people think. And yes, of course, it does take work and effort. Cognitive empathy isn't really my strong suit, I'm much better with affective empathy. But I seem to receive more objectively positive results when I combine my two-dimensional Ti with cognitive empathy. (but I still have my own unique narcissistic perception and highly natural or 'magical' affective empathy, otherwise there would be no hook to my stories)