Juiced On Writing

I recently noticed a brand new blog out there on the topic of writing. Entitled Write for Your Life, the author of the blog is a writer from Sheffield, England, named Iain Broome. The blog itself promises some interesting discussions if the first post is anything to go by.

Iain’s first post is entitled, “Writers, abandon your muses – they’re a work of fiction!” The blog goes on to argue that a muse doesn’t exist – it’s just a way of releasing blame for procrastination or non-writing productivity onto a voiceless entity rather than accepting it from within ourselves.

The blog gives some good reasonings behind this, but with the second comment is already refuted by one writer, Joanna Young. Writer’s don’t want to give up their muses that easily, and I’m not that surprised.

I’ve just written up a post myself where I refute the term “writer’s block” as existing. I don’t believe in writer’s block. It would be unacceptable in many other practices and professions (and I don’t want my surgeon stopping in the middle of any operation of mine, because he’s “blocked”), but the concept of writer’s block seems well interlinked in the creative nature of the writer, and their muse.

As a hobbyist and sometimes professional scrapbooker, I remember having published a series of articles some years ago in an English scrapbooking magazine, based on the premise that scrapper’s block existed and there were ways around finding more inspiration to continue scrapbooking – designing layouts and pages.

The term “scrapper’s block” had been coined right off the “writer’s block” term by uninspired scrapbookers years earlier. But scrappers altered the “muse” term to change this to stating “I’ve lost my mojo”. Mojo for Muse. But we still lost them all the time, whether our inner-creative was based on some greek semi-goddesses or some kind of American cocktail. The little blighters went walk-about on us all the time.

This is no new thing – this human propensity to personalise every concept – and our pets and sometimes inanimate objects for that matter – we name our family cars for instance, and my cats have been accused of plotting my terror on many occasions. So personalising  that portion of ourselves which is creative is not a surprising trait for many of us, and in some fashion allows us some control over thinking about it.

I use the term “muse” because I happen to like greek and roman history and myths. Although at some point I urbanised and updated my own muse – I even drew her once – and have dug out that years old picture to share here for you. She had kick-to-death black boots , flaming red hair, and an extremely low-cut cleavage, and for the sake of clarity at the time of drawing her, I even gave her a name.

Recently my muse had a sex change. I don’t know why, but I suddenly found myself dealing with a man – quite a good-looking and young man, I understand. Perhaps he’s just the natural outcome of turning 41 and beginning to wonder if I’m middle-aged or not. My own mid-life crisis.

An author I read recently suggested her muse was a little bird (as in “a little birdie told me”?) and the spirtual guides in animal form which Native Americans have offered also could be considered muses. In fact, if we look around, the whole world seems full of them.

I like to keep the muse around as a concept, but I don’t hear his/her voice over my shoulder, or even imagine them living any kind of life. When inspiration strikes, it doesn’t feel any different to me than the sudden remembering that I have to add those special lightbulbs to the shopping list, or to times when I have the answer to a particularly tricky test question. It’s all me – my mind, and my thoughts.

Still, although I don’t believe that muses go and get lost (or go on strike unless you feed them with lots of inspiring reading) – I still like to think that inside of me somehow, there is another personality and a great creative one at that.  Even as  I do acknowledge that I am the owner of my own creativity – and lack of it at times, and that lack of inspiration is down to other factors in my life, or just needing a breather.

Does this make my muse a fictional creature or figment of my imagination? You betcha. And I prefer it that way. It’s nice to think that we’re not alone in all of this, It’s nice to put a face to the concept of creativity, and it’s nice to have a muse in the first place. And a car called Vicky.

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