by William White Jr.

Created on: January 08, 2011

Muses. Those elusive goddesses associated with creativity and the arts. Oh, every writer’s dream that his own personal Muse should guide him daily on his written endeavors. The unchained free flowing creativity that emerges when the Muse strikes her chord and the writer’s heart sings his passionate ode.

So how does one go about securing a Muse for your own personal creative designs? The answer is far more simple that you at first realize… you don’t. The Muses are not beholden to the flighty and puerile cries for divine intervention in an author’s writing attempts. Much like the non-writer who says ‘It’d be nice to write for a living’ (meaning they want Dan Brown’s pay without actually doing Dan Brown’s work), the writer who implores the Muse for intervention is actually seeking an easy way to complete the task at hand. To this, the Muse stringently refuses to concede.

Nor should they. The Muse’s job is not to start the work the writer hopes will manifest. Many a writer will be struck by a Muse and use that in his writing, but that writer has already begun grinding out the work for which the Muse has inspired him. The Muse does not give the writer the words to write… the Muse takes the words the writer has already written and transcends them from the functional basics of communication into the tapestry of eloquence which becomes art.

The first step to attract the ethereal designs of splendor the Muse provides is to start the long task of laboring intensely to produce something with which the Muse may then transform. Think of it as a blood sacrifice to the Muse, only instead of offering blood, you’re offering blood, sweat and tears. Even the Muses are not so divine that they can take nothing and make something. If you want to provide the best writing the world has ever seen, you’re definitely going to have to earn that, as nothing you love is worth doing if there is no effort expended in the pursuit.

So before you get angry at the non-writer who says how nice it’d be to write for a living, remind yourself of how many times you thought how nice it’d be to call on your Muse… and have it answer without first having earned that privilege. Just as you, as a professional writer, would scoff at the concept of having a client refuse to pay you for your hard work and masterfully executed end result, so should fellow writers scoff at you when you sit before a blank piece of parchment and decry the injustices of your ethereal benefactors without first having put forth a modicum of effort to begin the work in question. It isn’t fair, but it is work. And isn’t that what ultimately separates us from those who think it would be ‘nice to write for a living’?

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