Inviting the Muse
Hey-o, Muse . . . Are you out there? Come sit by me!
There are movies about it, articles and podcasts about how to deal with it, and plenty of advice on kicking your butt in gear. Best advice ever? You’ve heard it. Butt in chair.
Have you ever experienced writer’s block? Oddly, I guess, I have not.
And yet, here I sit, calling for the muse. While I wait, I look for inspiration outside my window, and in photographs and drawings. I look through old journals. I take a photo. Sometimes I draw. Then I sit at my desk and let my fingers go.
I’ve been writing since I was twelve. Someone gave me a diary with a little fake gold lock and a pink satin ribbon bookmark. I think it had a puffy vinyl cover with flowers on it. I wrote all my secrets in there. About my friends at school, and my parents. I wrote about my crushes and broken hearts. Back then -like most preteens -my emotions were out of proportion. Bigger than life. Oh yes, I used the lock. I hid the diary in my dresser drawer and made sure no one ever saw what I’d written there.
As if anyone wanted to read it.
The point is, I carried the habit of writing my feelings on paper all through college and into my adulthood. I have boxes of journals going back to those days.
However, I didn’t get the “call” to write fiction until my youngest was in high school. I’m a late bloomer, I guess, though I’ve been writing consistently for many years and in many forms. For a while, since I’m a musician, I tried my hand at poetry, AKA lyrics. I wrote a few pop songs and recorded them. One song titled Politics of Love stands out in my memory. Catchy chorus! When the band fell apart, I moved on. Got married. Had kids. Taught preschool, then piano lessons. My children are now having children of their own.
And there has always been something to write about.
Even when there isn’t.
Right now I’m working on a second draft of a book I wrote in 2020. An old boyfriend sent a photo of something I’d left with him thirty years ago. [If you’re out there, thank you for the story idea.] Every day, I wake up in the morning and think about my characters while I make tea and eat a piece of fruit. Every day, I sit down at my desk and look at the scene list, a chapter list, that I update every day. I decide each day whose voice I want to write next and what works best for the story. I light a candle. I take a few hand-written notes to get the juices flowing, then I look at the most recent edits I’ve made and dig in. Does it have the tension I’m trying to create? Is it tightly written? I get typing.
Sure, there are distractions that stop me in my tracks. This morning a bunny sat up and looked in the window at me. We stared at each other for a few minutes before he hopped off.
But about that writer’s block. The muse is out there. I promise. And the good news is once you get words on paper, you’ll have a better idea about that character/plot/problem you want to write about. You’ll have something to edit. And pretty soon you’ll have a story.
Since 2015 I’ve written multiple drafts of 9 manuscripts. This summer I’m releasing my 4th book, (The Cliff Diver, Book 3 in the Mina’s Choice series). I started that book in early 2022 and right in the middle, another muse found me. I stopped writing Cliff Diver and began writing about a 15 year old girl in 1976. The muse carried me to the end of that book. FOREWARNED took a year and a half to complete, but -I think - it was worth every moment of butt in chair.
I sure hope that someday you’ll read it.
Your muse is definitely with you. Nine books? I call that prolific.