Comments on: More on writing being not so easy

By: mb

mb — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:04:11 +0000

I love my Muse but she is inconvenient. When I want to work on project X, she shows up with a whole scenario for project Y. I try to listen when she’s around, though, as most of her ideas are great. Sometimes (the musical version of Dante’s Inferno) they are not so great. It all flows much more smoothly when she helps, but I don’t need her in order to write — which is good, as she can often be found hanging out at the nectar bar with her buddies, neglecting me.

By: Caroline

Caroline — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:45:17 +0000

At school, I spent a lot of time waiting for a muse to show up. Never worked and I had to conclude that maybe they just don’t handle lab reports.

By: Steve Buchheit

Steve Buchheit — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:38:54 +0000

Amber, I love that joke (hell, I almost cracked it myself, something about equating Muse inspiration to mental whole wheat). Why are you leaving?

I think what brina and Lizabelle said is most important. Even if you have a Muse, you have to write when they’re not around. And just like brina, my Muse tends to go missing at the worst times. Still gotta write. Still have to finish.

By: Diana Peterfreund Blog | Louisa Edwards sells to St. Martins and Character Names

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:25:29 +0000

[...] I think about this stuff. What can I say? I’m the only one here who can do it. No muses in my [...]

By: hillary!

hillary! — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:05:22 +0000

Ummm, this is actually a response to the latest homesickness post. It made me cry. When they showed me the Santa Monica pier. And I’m only about 50 miles away from there. I can imagine the pain you feel. I commiserate.

By: Lizabelle

Lizabelle — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:05:34 +0000

Muses don’t do the work. Writers do. I loved Neil Gaiman’s NaNoWriMo pep talk last year (which has a lot in common with your “Writing is hard” post):

‘You write. That’s the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days…Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.’

(From here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/node/1065561)

By: Brent

Brent — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:49:47 +0000

I had a muse, but my keep-dandruff-off-your-shoulders faerie swept it away one day…

By: Justine

Justine — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:47:23 +0000

Amber: Stay! You have made me laugh twice today!

By: Amber

Amber — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:45:23 +0000

Steve B, I think you’ll find the plural of muses is muesli.

I’m getting my coat.

By: brina

brina — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:20:00 +0000

I am totally pro-muse. In fact, I’m fairly sure I have a muse, because sometimes — and this is magic — scenes pop into my head fully formed. Or, I swear, they come to me in dreams. Usually, however, when they come to me it’s at a very bad time. Like, I’m in the bathtub, where I can’t take my laptop. Or I’m driving a car, and I can’t write whilst driving.

But the important thing, I think, is that even when you have a muse, you can’t get lazy and only write when the muse appears. You have to soldier on even without the “inspiration” sometimes. What I have noticed is that my muse likes to abandon me at crucial moments, like when I am editing and thinking, “Oh, my God, I have no talent. None. None at ALL.”

Those are the times I *need* my muse. Not when I’m in the tub, you know?

By: Amber

Amber — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:39:19 +0000

This is all very a-muse-ing.

I’ve had the most rotten day at work and that’s the best I can offer. I’ll see myself out.

By: Justine

Justine — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:23:57 +0000

Julia: I am with you.

Maureen: Scott does not read this blog. We are safe.

Melinda: Absolutely. I suspect that’s what Maureen means by “magic” and by “brain monkeys”.

By: Melinda

Melinda — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:21:43 +0000

Makes me laugh that muses are out but magic is in. I must admit that I am a bit amazed at what I come up with sometimes when i am writing. After forty something years you’d think I’d have a bit of a handle on how my thinking works. You’d think as its my brain i’d at least be able to exert some kind of control but when i’m writing there really does seem to be some kind of magic involved. If Einstein’s thinking suggests we are only using a small proportion of our brains, who knows what they are really capable of. While I REALLY like the idea of the involvement of magic (not so much the muse because thats relying too much on one individuals involvement) I suspect that the sum of all my experiences, reading, watching and thinking is just combining in ways you wouldn’t suspect looking at the individual parts. Maybe being a writer is just being someone more able to surrender to those random couplings of individual stuff swirling around in our brains. Fun!

By: maureen johnson

maureen johnson — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:50:44 +0000

This is sort of the blog equivalent of making out. Do not tell scott.

By: Julia Rios

Julia Rios — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:16:53 +0000

I don’t buy the muse thing at all. I get ideas from things I see and hear, and then I mull them over again and again, as though my brain were a cud-chewing cow. Eventually the cud goes through my brain’s four stomachs and um… maybe it is time to stop with this particular metaphor.

By: Phil

Phil — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:25:42 +0000

God, I know the feeling. This entire weekend felt like I was trying to cough up wooden bricks. The words were down there, but they were fomenting a rebellion and absolutely would not come, no matter how I struggled and wrestled with ‘em.

But! When they do flow, when I’m writing under the guidance of ‘the muse’, man does it feel great. You get a jolt like sticking a fork into an outlet (I’m guessing. Not having done so, I allow that that could be far less pleasant than I imagine.) So I say: Death to Muses Unless They’re Being Cooperative!

By: Steve Buchheit

Steve Buchheit — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:19:43 +0000

Muses (Musii?) are as much trouble as they are help. Mostly mine drops in the bits of stories that get me all excited, and then leaves for a while. The hard part of writing is when she’s not there and you need to stitch together all the pieces parts she left lying around (the vast majority of time). Or, when you have the realization that “This is a great piece right here, but it’s not a story.” And then you have to figure out what the story should be.

I like my Muse, I’m keeping her. She doesn’t do the majority of writing, but no muse really does after all.

And one final thoughts on Muses, Albert Brooks did a movie called “The Muse” (1999, I think). For anybody who thinks living with a Muse is a wonderful experience, you should really see this. Well, you should see it anyway, it’s pretty damn funny.