Muse: the goddess or the power regarded as inspiring a poet, artist, thinker, or the like.
It is a very personal aversion of mine but I truly dislike hearing the word ‘muse’ used as an excuse for not being able to write, such as ‘My muse isn’t talking to me at the moment’ or ‘I think my muse ran away because I can’t seem to get my story moving’. I envision a little pink elf-like creature who sits on someone’s shoulder when they’re writing and whispers the words into their ear as if the writer has no control over what is happening.
It’s not some pixie or goddess or any other such ‘creature’ inspiring or inhibiting the writer. Life inspires, ideas inspire, ‘what-if’s’ inspire, pictures inspire, many other things inspire, and all of those are in the writer’s mind and heart and soul. No Greek goddess came wandering in, sat down opposite the writer and said, “Today you will create such and such a story.” No, the author came up with it in their own fertile mind.
By the same token said Greek goddess, or however you envision a muse, did not decide to go off and play with her male counterpart and thus leave the author hanging by his or her fingernails as they wonder what should come next in the story they’re working on. Yes life can step in and mess things up and that’s an acceptable ‘excuse’. Or the author can look at a page and say “This is not working so I have to rethink it,” but it’s on the author’s shoulders to do that. To sit around and say ‘Where is my muse?” is, in my humble opinion, a cop out of the worst sort.
The author is his or her own ‘muse’, nothing more, nothing less.
End of rant.
If a fairy was going to sit on me, I don't think I'd want him whispering the plot to a murder mystery in my ear. When the writers' are done working they can play with the fairies and not before :)
ReplyDeleteLMAO....Yeah for sure, Thorny.
ReplyDeleteI blame my gerbils. The ones in my head. They don't talk to me most days, ergo, I don't write. Sometimes however, they come out with the most amazing and catchy stuff...I really need to clean their run and replace their exercise toys...maybe a change of diet?
ReplyDeleteOK, OK, the gerbils are getting Extreme Makeover, The Home Edition! Ty Pennington, work your evil...erm, magic! LOL!
Agreed that the writer and their lives are the inspiration/muse though. It's a definite cop-out to blame The Muses or any other being for a lack of motivation or ideas. Guilty as charged say I, guilty as charged.
Interesting topic. For me inspiration comes from all sorts of places like you mentioned (music, art, people watching, daydreaming, etc.). I rarely feel like a plot just “comes” to me. I get a general idea, then I brainstorm the characters and plot until I can fill in all details to complete a rough draft. That is always the toughest part of the process for me. Sometimes I do need to take a break, walk away from a problem area when I’m blocked, but most of the time I try to keep on brainstorming until the creativity and the words flow again.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on that, Sloan, although I don't know quite where I'm going to end up until I get there. Some people say that's fairly obvious. LOL. But when I do get stuck I just pull back, maybe work on something else, and come back to the first one when I figure out how to move it on.
ReplyDeleteThe muses for me are alive and well.
ReplyDeleteThey want to work when I don;t.
LOL
A lot of my friends who are in the FF writing say their muses are asleep. I only tell them to write SOMETHING to get them going, even if its a small sentence.
I notice the more stressed I a, the muses will be very quiet for the moment until I find some kind of calm, then they scream again.
Awesome post Ed!
Thank Michael. I just had to get it off my chest LOL.
ReplyDelete