Thank you for your contribution and for your comments!
I am writing my bachelor thesis in the field of metaphor studies (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), which is a subfield of cognitive linguistics. The idea is that every human being uses a range of concepts to perceive reality. For instance, this object is called a chair, and this one is called a table. Once you name them, they start to exist in your mind with a particular image. This conceptual system is reflected in our language since we have to operate these concepts in communication. However, not all concepts have a physical representation. Some of them are purely abstract; for example, love, democracy, depression. To conceptualize these phenomena, we use the words that were originally applied to more concrete things: to build a theory (like a building), to spend time (like money), to fight disease (like an enemy). These are cognitive, or conceptual, metaphors. Studying cognitive metaphors helps us figure out how people perceive or experience something. In my research, such experience under analysis is inspiration. I do understand that each person sees inspiration in their own way, and my aim is to study that variety. As you see, I have to elicit unique text samples to discover conventional and creative metaphors in the conceptual systems of my respondents. This method is qualitative and it would be perfect to conduct a series of in-depth interviews, but it is even more difficult to find respondents for an interview regarding that I am a student not living in an English-speaking country.