Tag: Muse

Dear Universe, Please Deliver One Muse.

A message to the universe

Photo by Lindsey Garrett on Pexels.com

Sometimes I write because I see it as a method of getting an idea out there into the universe, as if the universe will supply me with something I need to deal with it creatively. Part of my belief system holds that, if one listens closely enough, the answers or comfort or solution is out there. I like whoever’s providing the aid to know what I’m asking. It comes from Quakerism and it also comes from the Christian belief of praying for what you need. I don’t know if I believe in what would be called “intercessory prayer” in some circles wholeheartedly, because my spirituality has become a muddle from the time a psychiatrist diagnosed me as bipolar. But I put words out into the universe occasionally, with some witnesses to hear. That’s you.

My life with the muse

Right now, I struggle with creativity. The spark is gone. I am writing without that burning desire to see what comes up next in my work. Everything I write feels pedestrian. I lay my problem on the muse I have had throughout my career. Muses exist to give motivation. For example, my writing life goes like this:

Inspiration>Obsession>Writing

I assume the muse enters at the inspiration part of the equation. I used to get inspiration from my dreams. My dreams haven’t come from a muse lately. They’ve come from the Karen of my subconscious. In my dreams, I forget little things like showing up for class (I’m the professor) and wearing clothing. I’m doing everything wrong, and I am about to be discovered as a fraud. My bad dreams don’t even have the courtesy of being a dystopic plot line, preferring instead pedestrian impostor syndrome.

As muses are notorious for whipping up their subjects into a creative fury, I lay the problems of my obsession stage on the muse I’ve had as well. The obsession is the need to get into the story to interrogate the dream. I want not just to know the story but to be in it. To be it. It’s an exhilarating feeling, like flight. The obsession part is alright, unless it’s not. I know writers go a little crazy when they write, but my obsessions come with hypomania. I get into mood swings that swing between elation and Subconscious Karen, telling me I’m out of control, as if she fears I will skip class and run around naked. (Thank God I have done neither.) So I don’t get wild, but I fear giving creativity any quarter will cause the calamity I dream of.

Go away, muse

So I fired my muse. Those obsession parts were too wild, and I feared sliding down a slippery slope to a bacchanalia in the middle of the University Ballroom and all those other explosions Subconscious Karen feared. I never have experienced the wild elation since I fired my muse. I miss it sometimes, but it’s nice not having Subconscious Karen around all the time (she’s only around sometimes now, usually when I’m under a lot of stress).

Now I wonder if I can hire a new muse. I don’t want an erratic, frenetic, startling muse anymore. But I want a muse to inspire me without the feeling that I’m about to choose to swing naked on that chandelier. There has to be a middle between swinging on a chandelier and Subconscious Karen.

It’s not about a muse, is it?

Writing this article has been alchemy. I discovered, in writing this, that it was about writing with bipolar disorder. Although I am convinced that I am not less creative with the bipolar meds, I don’t know how to grasp my creativity as readily as I would like to. In a hypomanic state, ideas jump at me and I grab onto them and run. I feel touched by the muse and my self-doubts melt. I feel gifted, and this makes writing easy. Subconscious Karen keeps me from veering off the deep end but makes my life uncomfortable and my mood swings worse. I have given up those things which encourage artificial highs (irregular sleep, extended stress, obsessive crushes) and thus have robbed myself of the muse.

My thought going out into the universe: Help me live with Subconscious Karen in a way that doesn’t rob me of joy. Help me find inspiration without obsession, intensity without disruption, creativity without condemnation.

The Muse

Meet my muse

My muse showed up in my dream last night, pale and red-haired and willowy, and kissed me on the forehead, then darted away.

My muse, the Muse of Things Hidden in Plain Sight, reminded me of my purpose when I thought I had long lost it.

My muse appears as a friend of mine, but isn’t really, because that person would not kiss me in dreams, however chaste. I would also not want to get in trouble with my friend’s wonderful wife. I understand symbolism, however. Long red hair and mischief speak to me. Muses should be wild, unpredictable, capricious. One does not possess muses. Muses possess one instead. So, of course, he would appear like my friend, knowing it would rattle me.

The message

Photo by Valeria Boltneva on Pexels.com

What is the message when my muse leans in and kisses my forehead? The first message is that Spring is here, even though we don’t feel it yet? Astronomical Spring is in 20 days (or so), and the weather has become warmer. The robins aren’t here yet, but the mourning doves are making plans for chicks. Snowdrops haven’t broken the ground yet, but my seedlings in the basement are making their way to true leaves.

The second message is that it’s time to write, and that there are reasons to write. I write about relationships — some of them romantic; others not. The muse’s kiss awakened my characters and gave me the blessing to write about them. The muse reminds me of who I am and what makes me who I am.

The end of winter

I guess I have been going through Winter. The last time I wrote significantly was November (but to be fair, I wrote a book that month.) I didn’t feel like writing; I didn’t feel inspired to write, and I didn’t know if I was a writer anymore.

For me, to be a writer is to be beautiful and mysterious, to hold within oneself multitudes, to hear strange harmonies. I think I might be there again.

I found my muse!

I’m looking for a muse.

I’m thinking of “muse” in the more abstract sense, because real-life muses seem to take too much energy. 

I need to feel inspired, which is something that’s hard to find when more or less filling in the areas between plot, which is what I’m doing with Gaia’s Hands. I don’t feel the sense of flow that I do when writing a novel. I’m not getting the sense of delight over my characters or scenes. 

I’m frustrated. I may actually go through an old manuscript I haven’t developed much and edit the holy hell out of it, except it needs to be turned into a romance itself. (It’s actually well on its way.) The name of it is Reclaiming the Balance, and the male protagonist is non-binary in the most literal way. I haven’t touched that again because it makes me uneasy, and I have to search my soul and question myself. 

Ahh… I’ve had half a cup of coffee and I’m suddenly feeling inspired to write. For the moment. Maybe breakfast coffee is my muse!


My Muse

My muse holds a magician’s top hat in the spotlight,
busks on a street corner playing with fire,
pens sonnets in the corner of the coffeehouse.
He disappears in crowds as I arrive,
and I pursue him to no avail
through the trail of illusion, through lingering tones,
through words scattered in my path,
through his vital force imbued in the air like ozone.

Becoming My Own Muse

What is the nature of a muse? A muse reaches into a creator’s soul and pulls forth the creator’s best work. As such, the muse is both the supporting angel and the demon lover, illustrated by the character of the Phantom in the musical Phantom of the Opera. Of course, all of this is in the mind of the creator; the muse himself might be a compelling person at the coffeehouse who asks about how the work in progress is doing and actually cares.

I had a muse once. Kind of a crazy thing, but he was an artistic type whose work appealed to me. And it didn’t hurt that he was beautiful in an ethereal way. He inspired me with his verve and his persistence, and my mind went on flights of fantasy and ended up in very vivid stories.

I had to give him up eventually. The problem with flights of fantasy is that they make one beholden to the subject. I had given the fantasy so much of my thoughts that I craved something back, even if it’s something as simple as recognition or support or friendship. Recognition, support, and friendship themselves feed creativity — anyone who creates needs connection and support, for creating is hard, lonely work sometimes. The muse remains a muse by being there.

My muse never made the transition.

In reality, though, people — even muses — will always disappoint us. In reality, people will not always be there when we need them. They will not understand what we need if we ourselves can’t articulate it. They can’t read our minds. They may not be able to see our beauty.

This is why I need to become my own muse.

Is it possible? The nature of a muse is intrigue and unpredictability and challenge, love and danger. How does one give that to oneself?

Chasing the Muse

My muse appears, elusive in the street,
skipping through foot traffic, disappearing
in the crowd. The chase begins again
at the edge of the forest where the light
through the branches conceals. I never
touch his arm, he never kisses me, we do not
ever meet.

Updates and Musings

  1. A question for myself: What is more important — success (not really), recognition (maybe), or skill/talent/competence (heck yeah!) I will always choose improvement and growth, given the circumstances. And I can see many situations where success happens because of factors that have nothing to do with competence and honing one’s craft.
  2. I’m feeling like I have to blow some cobwebs out of my brain. I don’t know if my muse is still on the job (if you’re reading this, Muse, send me a smile!) I need some fantasy, some novelty, some surprise, a little mysticism, fairy wings, talking cats, a rainbow in a dandelion. I need a charge to help put the young love in this damn book I’m working on. 
  3. I will continue writing. I’ve decided what my pdoc was addressing was my sense of perfectionism and inability to stop at some point of “good enough”*. So, although getting published is a nice to have, it’s not a measure of moderate proficiency. While I’m employed, I might have to settle for moderate proficiency, whatever it is. Or maybe not — I don’t have some of the more time-wasting habits like Netflix and excessive Facebook use, so I might have time for both.   
  4. I find out tomorrow or Tuesday about my Kindle Scout submission. I don’t think it will get adopted into the (now defunct) program. Try, try again. I’m not quite ready to throw it in the abyss of self-publishing.
  5. Any love and support  you can give will be appreciated. Even if the only people reading this are actually bots from Russia or Poland.
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* I often can only focus on one thing at a time because it has to be constantly getting better; I can’t stop at good enough. This is why “walk a half-hour daily” becomes “walk four miles a day and eight miles a day on weekends” becomes “walk the Illinois-Michigan Canal in a week”. (Note: Running isn’t part of the plan. In my case, running isn’t part of God’s plan.)

Muse — a fantasy and writing exercise.

This writing came to me in the middle of a fantasy (I’ve heard women are prone to those). The problem with my fantasies is that I will pick them apart, in the middle of the fantasy, so that they’re not so much a fantasy as a revised-revised fantasy where I act responsible and protect myself from potentially dangerous consequences. Or I put it into a novel where it’s not me it’s happening to.  My imagination is not as unabashed as I would like.

I’m going to play with it here, because 1) the topic is about Muses; 2) it will be fun to see what I learn and can pass along. Imagine that I’ve had a mysterious muse who reads my writing and anonymously gives me compelling writing prompts — no, this is not currently happening. In reality, an anonymous muse would be compelling — and frustrating, because I would spend a lot of time trying to figure out who they were.

Imagine a writing prompt then: Who do you think I am?

I don’t know if it would be fair to you to tell you who I think you are, because I’ve made assumptions, based on societal notions of muses and my own imagination. First, I assume that there are romantic undertones — not in a love and marriage sort of way, but with an assumption of spiritual or emotional attraction. The alternatives would be that you are pranking me with these prompts and a half-dozen of your friends are laughing at me, or that you are a cold, manipulative creature who wants me to hold you in highest regard until you crush me. I don’t want to believe these things about someone I’ve interacted with in an enjoyable way, so I assume that you truly enjoy this exchange with purest motives and that it buoys your spirits.

I have other assumptions. I assume that you’re male, because the current image of a muse is a figure of sublimated sexual attraction, and I prefer my figures of sublimated sexual attraction to be males. This assumption would be unpleasant to you if you were female. Another popular trait of muses is that they be aesthetically pleasing, and if I pictured you as a pale, willowy man with a poetic demeanor and wavy hair, you would feel slighted if you were a tall, raucous, hefty man with buzzed hair. I assume that you are creative, because you would not recognize my creativity if you weren’t. Whoever you are.

To be truthful, this is all about who I want you to be, isn’t it? Who I want you to be is you, and I want you to be clear with me as to who you are. 

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What I have learned:

  1. I hate societal norms of attractiveness. Notice my muse is not built like most of what passes for male in Hollywood. But my standards are equally random, and tell me nothing about who the person really is.
  2. I would be honestly afraid in this situation that I was being used/set up for someone else’s amusement and malicious satisfaction. Look up the movie Carrie for an example.
  3. “Who I want you to be is you.” That’s probably the most important sentence in this whole exercise. 
  4. I love fantasy.  But I love reality more. The people in reality are more interesting.
  5. I don’t know why I wrote this as if I was from Victorian England.
Happy New Year! And may you be visited by the Muse of your Choice.

Once upon a time

My goal was 2000 words today. I’m already at 3000, and I might get more done today.

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Thought on my mind:

Once upon a time, I had a muse.

What is a muse? In Greek mythology, they were the go-to goddesses of the Arts. There were seven, one for each of the Greek arts. In popular imagination, they are people who inspire artists, writers, and the like. Muses are usually women, but only because women do not take their birthright as artists to claim a muse. I am not like other women; I will have my muses.

Once upon a time, I had a muse.

Why did I want a muse?

There is a type of energy one can only get from a giddy affection for someone. It’s an affection that has no future, has no lust, has nothing but regard for the other person and — oh, the beauty! The beauty of that person!

It’s pure ludus, as the Greeks would term it — an infatuation that would only shatter were reality to intrude. It’s embarrassing, painful, and distilled into perfection when the person merely utters, “hi”.

When that person says “I’m following your progress”, then that person becomes a muse. That ludus energy gives a creative boost that’s like being high on the pictures behind your eyes.

Once upon a time, I had a muse.

Who is my muse?

I will never tell you. I will never tell him.

Once upon a time, I had a muse.

Notice that phrase is in past tense. My muse has gone.  All I can do when a muse disappears is let him go, and hope he forgives me.