First I’d like to say congratulations to all of the finalists in the Writing with the Stars Contest! The next several months are going to be packed full of good writing and some spunky competition.
Speaking of spunky, I’ve been battling my muse a bit lately while working on book 2 of the Dark Protectors. Don’t get me wrong, my muse is usually absent and I sit alone pounding away on the laptop. And I always figured that those moments when the writing flows, when the muse shows up, would be like that scene from Cinderella when the birds sing, the sun shines and the pretty dress smoothly drops onto her. NOT.
My muse is like an impatient two year old who wants juice. NOW. Right there in my ear. Let’s do the next chapter, I know what happens. No. Next chapter. Skip ahead.
She doesn’t care if I’m driving down the street and need to watch the blind spot in my car. She wants to write chapter 11. NOW. No. No. No. Not work. Computer. Time to write. I want juice.
I’ve been asking around…and I’m not alone. My friend and Writing with the Stars Finalist Maeve Greyson describes her muse as a petulant, hard-headed, wicked beastie known to jolt Maeve out of a sound sleep at any time of the night.
Speaking of Maeve, you’ll be seeing some hot, fast-paced and intriguing writing from her during the contest. Her novel has a wickedly sexy Scottish Alpha and a stubbornly feisty heroine who…well…I guess you’ll have to read each month’s RT magazine to find out. 
So…what’s your muse like?
I can usually get my muse to leave me alone with chocolate and potato chips. Sometimes.
Maeve’s book sounds so interesting! Congrats to all of the finalists in the contest…it’ll be fun to watch the competition. Interesting blog!
My muse is a heifer! She shows up, gives me these story ideas than runs away laughing in the wind. Then I’m stuck trying to get all these ideas down. But at least she gives me something!
Oh yeah. I can NOT shut up my muse once it starts. Many hours of sleep lost, house a mess and quick meals for my sweet hubby. So…yeah, I can totally relate.
Write on, my friend.
Hi Rebecca. What’s my muse like? My best friend, actually, and if my friends calls in a crisis, I drop everything to help ~ if she needs a chapter written, and I’m in the car, I might pull over and stop, grab my pen and notebook, and jot down an outline of what my muse is nudging me about, or yelling at me about. I also have conversations wtih my muse like … “Not now. I’m driving. Can we do this later? Ok, Ok, I know you want juice, but I can’t get that for you until …” the same way I’d answer a child in a car seat who is yelling for juice, or the play ground, or time to play with a friend. I think it comes around simply to acts of discipline, yet still acknowledging the muse. I hear you. I’ll follow through, promise. I’ll even pull over and make notes. (And when I get home, later, I find that the notes are really little ‘bits from God’ as I like to call them – some taking my story in a direction it needed, but that I was too muddled to see for myself.) I would never NOT pay attention, but it’s a matter of HOW I can pay attention that is the question for me.
I also think of it as a privilege (am I spelling that right?) to be allowed to walk around in my life ‘tuned in’ to my muse so that I CAN hear her AND converse with her ~ or that part of my brain.
Some people can never plug into their streams of creativity. How sad is that? I feel blessed whenever my muse shows up, even at chaotic times.
Sometimes, however, I do wonder if other people have more than one muse, like several angry children yelling at you at once. “Hear me, No, me first, No, it’s my turn.” Fortunately I only have one muse and so far she’s been helpful, although I don’t always like where she’s going … until I take the trip with her and figure out it really has been a gift, after all. Hope this helps!
I do often, however, ‘argue’ with several characters in my book, holding long conversation with them when I’m driving, and once I questioned out loud, Am I Crazy? And the answer came to me loud and clear, No. You aren’t crazy. You are just a writer!! I smiled to myself the rest of the day.
Maybe it’s that I was a late bloomer and my muse had to work hard to make me hear her, but she’s quite well behaved most of the time. On the other hand, she really likes to be “fed” just before I go to sleep each night. I tell her what I wrote that day and, politely, ask that she have the next scene ready for me the next morning and usually she does. Unfortuneately, she’s still punishing me for waiting so long before becoming a writer, so I almost never have more than that scene, however long or short it may be!
My muse always waits on the other side of a brick wall. I go as far as I can and it seems like it’s only when I ‘hit the wall’-hard-and I’m totally frustrated and bewildered-that’s when my muse shows up. But not before. And yeah, that’s usually after I’ve already powered down my computer and started getting ready for work.
A muse? I don’t think I have one. But I do have a fussy, slightly neurotic subconscious that needs to be fed high doses of music, art, and new experiences or else I have nothing to write about.
Oh, and lots of Cherry Coke Zero never hurts either.
My muse seems to sit and wait for the most impossilbe time to show up. Always when I’m on my way to somewhere or in the shower, never when I’m sitting in front of the computer. When I sit in front of a blank screen, she’s far, far away, probably laughing at me. I have to cary pieces of paper around with me so I can scribble down what she gives me no matter where I am and then labor alone in front of the screen.