Are you guilty of abusing your Muse? I know I am. Back when I was younger, I was grateful when she graced me with inspiration. That was back before peer workshops, my MFA program, Amazon, snarky reader reviews and that last snippy comment from Kirkus.
Nowadays, I take it all out on my Muse. First, I slam her into a chair and demand a bunch of ideas. No, I do not take her out on a walk in the sunshine or make offerings of honey and porridge. I don’t compliment her or play her music, either. Just wham, bam, give it to me, Muse.
And when I get the ideas, I start demanding pages. Lots of them. Product, Baby, this isn’t art, this is a job. Churn them out. I have friends writing two, three books a year. Or a month. My muse complains? I keep her up all night and call her dirty names.
After I get the pages, I start in on the quality. What kind of a flat, insipid scene do you think this is? Do you call this character original? Are you even moving the plot forward, Bimbo? Which Muse are you, anyway? Epic Sentences? Derivative Plotting? Mediocre Prose?
After a while, of course, the Muse rebels. Sometimes she just stares blankly at the wall, or paces, biting her nails. She moans something, but it’s Greek to me.
Lately, I’ve been trying something different. When my Muse grants me an idea, I thank her. Even if it’s not very good. I put in an idea file instead of throwing it out right away, same as I do with my kids’ second-best drawings. When I do this, I find the Muse perks up, and will often throw out another idea or two.
These stink, too, but I smile and act pleased. It took me a while to train the dog.
Then, when I get a good idea, I take the Muse out, give her a nice ripe apple, bring her to a yoga class. She’s absurdly grateful for this kind of thing. Turns out she doesn’t like being chained to a chair all day. Who knew?
Now I’m getting actual pages, and it’s hard to remember not to kick the Muse in the teeth, snarling, “Shallow tripe! What do you mean by sending me this garbage!”
After all, I wouldn’t treat a friend that way, or even an acquaintance. In fact, the only person I treat with casual cruelty is…myself. But when I imagine my creative writing self as a lovely Greek nymph (Thalia, maybe, since my last novel’s a bucolic comedy, or maybe Calliope or Euterpe) I realize just how careless I’ve been.
Because a Muse that’s being ill-treated won’t hang around for long. She’ll run off and go help somebody else, and you’ll see the book you half-imagined writing, authored by someone else, climbing the bestseller lists.
Or else she’ll sick the Furies on you, and make you eat a lot of Twinkies and cheese. Either way, it’s not a good path.
So give your muse some praise, and some excursions, and some time to produce. Pick her some flowers. Play her a song. And above all else, don’t tell her that the last idea she gave you was a load of sheep droppings.
I so needed this post.
I have been very nasty to my blogging muse this week.
I forced her to work while severely jetlagged
then was unimpressed with the posts she churned out.
Not nice of me.
Wondering…are all muses female?
by Kimber Chin May 31st, 2007 at 8:25 amI talk to male writers
and even their muses are female.
Anyone out there with a male muse?
I send my muse out to be abused so she doesn’t associate the torture with me. Then when she returns, I pat her on the head and say soothing nonsense words, and she’s so grateful to see me, she doesn’t complain about the cursing and the crying and the working at all hours of the day and night.
I don’t have a male muse, but I know an amazed mule. (No, that sucked! You stupid muse! I know there’s a joke in there somewhere, and THAT’s what you come up with? Back to the mines, you hack!)
by Kerry Allen May 31st, 2007 at 10:13 amFor once I’d like to see a Muse banged around a bit.
Muse Abuse!
Which is different from what we saw in the 80s, which was mousse abuse…
by Walt May 31st, 2007 at 10:47 am:twisted:I call my muse the Old Hag and I try to keep her locked up in a closet because she’s always pestering me to write stuff I don’t want to and that would distract me from what I need to write which is already complete in my head!:twisted:
:wink:Maybe we should all throw our muses into the ring and watch them beat the snot out of each other.:wink:
by Kimber An May 31st, 2007 at 11:09 am“Maybe we should all throw our muses into the ring and watch them beat the snot out of each other”
Oh, h*** no.
I don’t allow my muse to mix with other muses.
’cause if I do,
before I know it, they’ll be forming a union,
expecting regular working hours
(no more working them til the wee hours of the night),
weekends off,
gasp,
vacations.
Believe me, that way lies trouble.
by Kimber Chin May 31st, 2007 at 11:48 amIsolate and dominate.
Methinks my muse has passive-aggressive tendencies. Kimber An’s comment about being pestered to write stuff she doesn’t want to sounds awfully familiar. I have the order of my first 20 books or so all planned out. Number Two and Number Twelve are practically finished, whereas the file on Number Six consists of a sticky note that says “Alik’s book,” and Three through Eleven aren’t a whole lot thicker.
Nah, she wouldn’t do that to me. I think she just has ADHD.
But just in case, maybe I should bake her some cookies…
by Kerry Allen May 31st, 2007 at 11:53 amMy muse only shows up once in a great while. *sigh* I think mostly she is out drinking.
by Jennifer May 31st, 2007 at 5:31 pmYou folks are cracking me up. I’ve now got this mental image of an Old Hag with ADHD who is fond of the bottle and agitating for workers’ rights.
Kimber Chin, let me guess, you work in management?
by Diantha May 31st, 2007 at 6:08 pm[...] May 31st, 2007 by seanachi So today’s post on Romancing the Blog was about how we treat our Muse. After a humorous accounting of the tortures, maltreatment, and abuse she heaps upon her Muse, Alisa Kwitney concludes: [...]
by Mental Health Day « A Field of Paper Flowers May 31st, 2007 at 6:16 pm“Kimber Chin, let me guess, you work in management?”
In, around, under, over, despite,
you name it.
I’m a business babe and proud of it.
Only tolerated here
’cause I buy romance novels in mass quantities.
Otherwise, I’d be banned for
by Kimber Chin May 31st, 2007 at 7:04 pmsentence fragments, poor spelling,
and use of imaginary words.
Hmmm, a male muse. Now then I really would never get anything done. My muse is currently sulking as I’ve run out of milk for coffee. How could I be so stupid?
Actually, this week I was pondering angels (particularly the quote attributed to Michelangelo which says “I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free”) and was wondering if I have an angel in my keyboard. I should have known better. I have an angel on the top of my bookcase (actually, better known as a Molly the Muse angel soft toy) and when I went to check a book title on my shelf she promptly fell down and hit me on the head.
by Yvonne Lindsay May 31st, 2007 at 7:09 pmOkay, catching up here after a month away. Reading parts of some of these essays out loud to Valerie. Mentioned the male muse theory. She asks “Who wants a muse who can only recognize eight colors and classifies music as rock and not-rock?”
(I promptly refuted her argument by naming all nine colors.)
I think it was Ernest Hemingway who said a real writer doesn’t wait for inspiration, he goes out and hunts it down with a club.
Me, if I think of my muse as muse I think of them as a sort of brainstorming think tank. Got the whole gang in a room with lots of coffee and doughnuts and flip chart pages taped to the wall. I stick my head in and ask what’s up and they shove a wad me scribbled notes on napkins and envelopes and stickies at me. Ideas. What I do with them is up to me. They’re in charge of inspiration, I’m the go-to guy for perspiration.
Not as elegant as some arrangements I’ve heard tell of, but it works for me.
by KeVin Killiany June 2nd, 2007 at 8:29 amMy muse is male. I get mighty ticked at him when he decides he’d rather watch football or NASCAR, but mostly we get along. And when we write love scenes, wooo baby they are HOT!
The thing about male muses - they really prefer meat and potatoes to the odd apple or two. So anyone looking to trade out your girly muse for a guy - keep that in mind!
by FrancescaH June 2nd, 2007 at 1:03 pm[...] Ooohh…I never thought of it that way, Alisa….wow. [...]
by Domingo Delicioso #6 « Desperate Writer June 3rd, 2007 at 1:48 amMy Muse has killer narrative skills. She constantly comments on toilet paper, aspirin, advertising, coffee, sunsets, whacky situations involving in-laws and outlaws and cat claws. She talks non-stop!
(Side note: My husband always regrets it when he asks, “So, whatcha thining about?”)
The trick for me is to actually have a pen or keyboard at hand to write it all down. Sometimes she comes up with the FUNNIEST stuff, and I miss it because I’m on a long car ride or pushing a shopping cart. I really wish, at times, that she could record all her chatter on one of those mini-recorder thingies. Then I could thresh the words and find those golden kernals that are worth keeping.
by groovy June 3rd, 2007 at 1:25 pm