The gestation of our creative thoughts

Lately, I've been really focused on a challenge I'm having with the new story idea. I can't seem to nail the conflict I need to push the story forward and I just keep circling and circling around the same few uninspired ideas. I get agitated (ZOMG WHAT IF I NEVER HAVE A GOOD STORY IDEA AGAAAAAAIIIIIINNNNN) and try to force myself to produce the solution--to simply manufacture inspiration on command. Which, of course, is silly. That's not how truly inspired storytelling is born. If I force myself to pick an idea, the chance of it being the right, the very best, idea is slim.

I am reading Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. I think every creative person should read this book, perhaps multiple times, as I have done. Today I read the following passage:

Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life: in understanding as in creating.

It was exactly what I needed to hear. I've gotten exactly nowhere after two weeks of shining a spotlight on my thoughts, demanding a solution to my creative challenge. Now I will give my creative self some dark, quiet space and see what ideas take root.