Paul Cézanne, The Sea at L’Estaque behind Trees, 1878–79. Oil on canvas, public domain.

Creativity rarely arrives as a single bright idea. It builds the way a painter works a canvas: a stroke, a step back, another stroke laid over the first. Most of the work is patience, and most of what looks like inspiration is attention that was kept up long enough for something to surface. Leave room for it, and it tends to show up.