I tend to write best/most when sparked by an emotion, whatever it is, and I've sometimes worried that that means I can only write when something happens or I feel a certain way. It's very true that when something happens the first thing I want to do is write about it especially if it is anger. I've noticed with liking someone though sometimes I don't want to write about it and I've wondered if that's because I don't like liking people, not any more, and if that's me suppressing it. See my first poem of the three published here if you wanna, that explains it pretty well.

But I also force myself to write when I'm not inspired. I try to write every day. Sometimes I'm better about it and sometimes I'm not. Often I'm not happy with what I come up with but I view it like practice: I need to at least flex the muscle.

I've also found as I've gotten older I've started writing fictitious poems or poems from other points of view, etc, stuff that isn't directly inspired by anything in my life, and I think that's very good and healthy and it encourages me that my poetry isn't completely narcissistic or only fed off of my own experience.

That's an interesting experiment. Now I am going to try writing poetry about food and see what I come up with.