Do the everyday hard graft

When I studied music, my main focus was composing. This entailed a lot of copying: copying initial ideas into sketch books, copying more developed ideas onto musical scores, copying instrumental parts from scores.

Unsurprisingly, copying became an important part of my compositional process; seeing the notes forming and intertwining as I copied them provided me with a strong sense of how each note and phrase rubbed along and interacted with another.

As I copied out my ideas, my thoughts about developing and enhancing them gained clarity; the task of copying provided the space within which my intuitions about my music could incubate and then rise to the surface of my thinking.

Everyday and seemingly mundane tasks can gradually reveal how intricate details rub along, interrelate and frequently combine to create surprising and creative things. Embrace these tasks: they make eureka moments possible.