Connect With Your Muse: WL 366 (#8)

Lesson 8: Connect with your muse.

Your muse is the power that inspires you to write. It's an inner fire that burns, flickers, or fades depending on the day. Some writers use a tangible object that represents that fire--that daily feeding of inspiration.

My friend Cece has a troll. Jen has a stuffed devil horse. Alan has a picture of his granddaughter. For Frankie, it's her library card. And Eric has a wooden, featureless man. I don't know the story behind their muses, but I know they mean something to their writers.

For me, it's Grumpy. No, not the bail bond chick. Grumpy the Snow White dwarf. Grumpy tells it to me like it is. If I'm ready to give up and go take a nap after just six hundred words, all I have to do is look at Grumpy, and his face tells me exactly how he feels about that. He doesn't like nonsense, so he keeps me level headed and focused on my writing task. Sure, he can be hard to get along with at times, but a little kiss on his nose softens his demeanor, and then we can work together just fine.

Before you think we're all a bunch of wackos, consider the fact that most writers become deeply attached to their characters, and it's considered completely normal (well, normal within the admittedly eccentric world of writing). If we can become attached to our paper people, why not to a muse-representing object that inspires us to create those characters and the world in which they live? 

Writing is a lonely endeavor. Certainly you can understand why a writer must connect with her muse . . . and occasionally give him a little peck on the nose.

Do you have a muse, tangible or nontangible? Tell us about it.

Visit me tomorrow for another Writer's Leap 366 lesson.