Musings on muses

Just what is a muse?

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

—Kurt Vonnegut, from his list of eight writing tips.

Kurt Vonnegut perfectly describes a muse here, even if he doesn’t use the word “muse.”

A muse is a single person. You feel them looking over your shoulder. You write to please them. To make them laugh. To make them feel. And perhaps to love them.

I suppose it’s as if you’re on stage, performing, but it’s more intimate than that. A muse can be someone no longer in your life—a friend who is no longer a friend, a person who has died. A muse can be someone you’re curious about. Or just someone you want to touch.

To write to touch someone is the best way to write. To write to speak to another. To write to be with them.

A muse can take many forms, though. I work with a writer whose muses are the trees he’s cared for his entire life. You might say he writes to the whispers of their souls (and if you don’t believe trees have souls, I’d like to invite you to take a hike with me).

Annie Dillard found her muse at Tinker Creek. Maggie Nelson’s Bluets grew from her obsession with the color blue (and her grief). Mary Karr mines her dreams for inspiration. Walking has formed the cadence of Rebecca Solnit’s thoughts, and she even wrote a book about walking and thinking.

Throughout most of my writing life, I’ve felt myself as my own muse. I’ve written to explore myself, to know myself better—to spelunk into myself, in short.

“A muse can be a mirror: a reflection of the artist’s desires, anxieties, dreams and needs,” said the writer and photographer Vince Aletti.

But this isn’t necessarily good. I don’t consider the work that came out of writing for myself my best work. There’s something about the frisson of writing to another person that can feel almost like you’re writing with them.

The art of creating sparks

The best writing happens when you reach out beyond yourself. There’s something mystical about it. You’re going beyond your little box of self to be inhabited—yes, inhabited—by a spirit of the imagination—a spirit that you breath in.

The word ‘inspiration” comes from the Latin inspirare, meaning “to breathe into.” This etymology connects to the idea of divine influence, as it implies being “breathed into” or infused with a creative spirit.

The muse of Greek mythology is often depicted in a beautiful flowing gown and playing a harp. This muse was invoked by authors to sing stories into their ears, but I’d like to recast this muse. To write for a muse is to yearn, to reach for another—and to perhaps even hold another with one’s words.

A muse can only be held in the imagination, though. That’s the beauty of a muse: a muse can not be possessed.

I think when we write to be loved and to love, that is where we find our best writing.

Invoking the muse by working

A muse doesn’t come without being called, though. Pablo Picasso famously said, “The muse exists, but she has to find you working.”

No matter what Greek mythology teaches, the muse doesn’t sing the words of a story to you; the muse is conjured in the telling.

I see the muse as hundreds of invisible sprites that sleep in the whispery spaces between each word. These sprites are enlivened only by the breath of a churning imagination, by the stirrings of a story moving forward.

Such a muse is ineffable, so miniature that she often goes unnoticed, yet an author must trust that the responsibility for bringing those story sprites to life resides in creating a spool of words that spins onto the page.

In fact, another name for muse might be routine. When you work regularly, inspiration strikes regularly.

The words you create every day are each fruit-bearing kernels of inspiration. Each word wants more and more words to follow. And you are the all-powerful God that sends those words into a world that’s coming to life before your own eyes.

Let the blank page be a spigot for all of the dramatic, ornery, lyrical, and shocking thoughts in your head that are eager to come out. Let the blank page be an invitation to touch and to love your muse.

Writing prompt: an inspiration invitation

If you have written to a muse, write down why you liked to write to your muse, how it affected your imagination and your writing. Do you still write to that muse? If not, why not? If so. what can you do to keep your conversation going?

Subscribe in the name of musings!

Because a quote

“Perhaps he makes a choice. He chooses the memory of her. That’s why he turns. He doesn’t make the lover’s choice, but the poet’s.”

― Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire

A special writing event with Memoir Nation

The words “goal” and “deadline” might not ring with any poetic allure, but these two words are at the center of

Memoir Nation

’s January Writing Event: JanYourStory.

What is JanYourStory? In short, the challenge is to write 500 words each day in January. We want you to use the power of the new year (and New Year’s Resolutions to start your memoir or give your current memoir a serious new liftoff!

If you can start the new year with a writing streak, then we hope you’ll keep that streak going all year with the support of Memoir Nation.

Contact me about my one-on-one work with writers

Because a photo prompt

My dog has been sick. He gets up five or so times a night with diarrhea. That makes it tough on my sleep, but I’m so thankful for quiet moments in the darkness with the moon and just the two of us.

The owls are a highlight. It’s like they’re all planning the next day for the crows.