Musings about The Muse.

Yet another blog entry spawned by a conversation with Ms Papercuts, ironically leading me to wonder if she is, in fact, mah muze...

What exactly is a muse? In Greek mythology, they are basically nymphs who whisper ideas into the ear of a writer/poet/artist/sculptor/etc, and inspire works of art. For the sake of brevity, in this blog, I will use "artists" to refer to writers, painters, sculptors, etc., because I'm too lazy to write "writers, painters, sculptors, etc.," every five seconds.

I think that, for an artist, the idea of a muse can be a double-edged sword.

On one hand, I've heard artists (especially writers) refer to "waiting for the muse to show up". In other words, "I'll (create) when the muse gives me something to create." To me, this is a cop-out: I'll create when someone else gives me something to create. I'll create someone else's vision. I won't do any work until someone else does the hard part, which is coming up with something. On that same hand, it can also be crippling: I can't create until someone whispers the first few words into my ear. I can't take the first step unless someone holds my hand.

To that I say: Muses aren't real. There are no little Greek water nymphs that whisper into your ear and give you inspiration. Inspiration comes when you seek it out yourself. If you are staring at a blank piece of paper, waiting for the muse to come along, you will be staring at that piece of paper for a long, long time.

On the other hand, I do think that the muse can be a very useful tool. But then, it depends on what you see as a muse.

Is it another person? For me, other people can serve as muses. Not because they come prancing in, whisper an idea, and leave me to barf my newly discovered genius all over the paper, resulting in a masterpiece. Not at all. But some people serve as a sounding board for ideas.

In that sense, Ms Papercuts has more than served as a muse. I'll bounce ideas off of her, discuss possible future projects, etc., and more than once, this has served to provide enough inspiration to send me careening down the path of productivity. She has also quite literally been my muse with this blog, when she'll say "blog about X" (or XXX, as the case may be...) because she is bored and wants to read my blog. This blog entry about muses was the result of such a discussion.

Maybe it's because she and I are on very similar wavelengths as both writers and psychos, but our conversations have resulted in substantial increases in my productivity. A lengthy discussion about vampire cliches led to the creation of my own vampire novel, in spite of swearing up and down I had no interest in writing about vampires. It turns out, I am interested in vampires, I just found a lot of the characteristics of vampire stories to be tired and overdone. Once I -- as a result of that conversation -- freed myself of some of that overdone crap, a story came naturally, and I'm not only writing a vampire story, I'm loving it.

I think a muse can also be, as the divine Ms Papercuts and I have, of course, discussed, something else: a ritual, an object, a state of mind. By "ritual", I don't mean setting up an alter and conjuring demons to persuade the publishing industry to publish whatever tripe I produce -- though I think some writers have done that in recent years -- but rather a "pre-writing" ritual, for example: Getting a cup of coffee, sitting at a certain table, putting on a certain CD, etc. While this doesn't result in ideas randomly pouring in on the voices of angels through the parted clouds, it *does* put an artist in the creating state of mind. That alone is sometimes enough to get the inspiration going.

My cat, Midget, strongly believes that she is my muse. I can sit at the computer chatting with Ms Papercuts, reading random websites, playing a game, etc., and Midget will lay on the other side of the room, licking her paws and looking bored. But just let me open up a Word document and start furrowing my brow over one of my WIP's, and she will join me. When I wrote at a desk, the keyboard sat on a tray below the actual desk, allowing her to sprawl her fluffiness all over my notes. If I am writing, she *has* to join me. I'm reasonably certain that she takes credit for most of my writing, though I doubt she considers herself responsible for some of my less than stellar work. "She wrote that at Denny's, I wasn't there," she'll say.

(I should mention that while writing that paragraph, she hopped up on the chair next to me. I'm telling you, she knows...)

Now, in all seriousness, while Midget is certainly not doing much to actually help me write, her presence is, to a degree, part of my writing ritual. Her presence is calming, and when I stop to think or mull over something, I can scratch her ears, pet her, or drag sticky notes across the desk for her to chase, all of which seem to help clear my mind.

The idea of sitting and waiting for the muse is ridiculous to me. Inspiration doesn't come to you, you have to go find it. I think everyone has different ways of going about this, but in general, I can think of far more productive means than staring at a blank piece of paper.

Here are some ways that help me and might do the same for you:

1. Draw a map. I learned this from Sara Douglass' website. As a fantasy writer, I'm creating new worlds, and sometimes simply drawing a map will break the ice. As you lay out a new world, the history of that world starts to fall together. Characters and a story soon follow. Remarkably effective.
2. Talk to Ms Papercuts. Really. You should try it.
3. Grab a book off the shelf and start flipping through it, especially a coffee table book or some sort of reference book. Photos can do wonders for stirring the imagination. For anyone who's ever wondered why I have over 3,000 books on random subjects, this is why.
4. Go people-watching. Srsly. Sit on a bench in a mall, and watch people. Make up stories about them. Get totally crazy with them: "That lady is actually a federal agent. She's following that guy in the pink T-shirt because he's a serial killer." "That kid is an alien." Etc.
5. Smell the roses. Or rather, observe the roses. Go out to someplace familiar (a park, for example) and look at everything. Really look at them. Watch the squirrels. Look at how the spiderwebs sit between rose stems. Look at a familiar building and see if it could function as something else: a secret military bunker, whatever.
6. Eavesdrop. Ever walked into a conversation at the wrong time and heard something totally out of context? Sit at a restaurant and listen to the people behind you talking. Bonus if you can get close to someone on a cell phone and only hear half the conversation. Fill in the blanks in your head.

#'s 4, 5, and 6 sound really silly, but trust me: even though you're not likely to use a lot of the things you come up with, it can be enough to just get the juices flowing. And you never know: sometimes you'll find a viable idea in the most unexpected of places. (I once created a science fiction alien based off of a ceiling fan. Never underestimate the potential of an idea.)

So, I think the muse can be anything that causes inspiration, whether it's someone literally giving you an idea, a ritual that puts you in the writing state of mind, or anything. I just think that sitting and waiting for the muse to show up is nothing more than laziness ("I need someone else to take the first step") and fear ("I need someone to hold my hand while I take the first step"). Creating is scary. No one ever said it was easy.

Now I must go: my furry little muse has decided she would rather be fed than help me write.