Your Muse Calls
Her call comes at inconvenient times. Like when you’re eating lunch. Enjoying every mouthful of carefully constructed coleslaw and an equally carefully constructed egg sandwich.
You know if you don’t obey the call, the message will be lost. You push back my chair and trudge once more to your computer.
You probably feel ambivalent about your muse. She’s laid-back by nature and only wants to write when the mood strikes (which isn’t very often). There are times, days, weeks, even months when she’s silent. You look up into the clouds. Perhaps you could see her like a passing plane or a sparrow curving its way to the nest.
Your writing muse lives on the right side of your brain — the side where all the creative work takes place. Without trying, she accesses your unconscious mind, the site of dreams and imagination. Where you store your hidden memories.
“Come on, come on,” you call, glaring at your computer. You wait for inspiration and fulfillment. It’s hard to wait for anybody. Especially the muse since she’s so capricious.
The bad news is that to be a writer, only 20% comes from the muse. The rest is sweat, struggle, and toil. Your task is to put in the work. The muse then, perhaps, will give you a whiff of divine inspiration. It would be best if you wrote whether you feel like it or not. Commitment, persistence, patience are what it takes.
I don’t know about you, but I find those qualities deplorably lacking in me.
The muse has to feel your zeal, your passion for the written word. She needs to know that with or without her, you’re still going to win.
And win, you will!
Shoshana Kobrin is a writing consultant, editor, and author. Contact her for workshops and individual consultation on several writing topics. She is available for presentations to your organization.
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