Inspiration: Finding Your Muse

You can't wait for inspiration.  You have to go after it with a club.  

~ Jack London

Find your clubs. Dust them off. It’s time to go on a Muse hunt.

The inspiration of the arts, Greek Mythology’s Muses were the nine daughter’s of Zeus.  The term Muse has become forever linked with the idea of inspiration. Some writers have a specific Muse, something or someone who ever inspires their writing. Fellow writers have identified their Muses to me as places, other writers, mundane items or daily tasks, fictional characters, and particular people.

Muses can change from project to project, or they can remain the inspiration for a writer throughout many works, or perhaps throughout life.

As Jack London states, a writer simply cannot use the excuse of writer’s block, or a lack of inspiration, as an excuse to delay creating. Sometimes we have to be more proactive about searching out a Muse.  The overly-used statement that inspiration is everywhere is true, but it doesn’t mean that the same things will inspire the same people.  And even if a fellow writer and I view the same object, or visit the same place, or love the same person, it doesn’t mean that our interpretations will be the same about this object, place, or person.

Actively experience your world this week. What do you find beautiful? What repulses you? What brings you bliss? What breaks your heart? Both positive and negative emotions can lead you to a Muse. Compelling writing is not driven solely by pleasantries.

Don’t wait for your Muse to find you. And once you obtain your Muse, be prepared to write with more truth, more confidence, and more hope because you will never again be writing alone.

Possible Writing Challenges

1)   Identify your Muse and write a poem directed to him, her, or it.

2)   What are three of your inspirations? Write a paragraph about each, explaining what these inspirations do for you or what you take from them.

London, Jack. “Imagination.” n.d. Quotegarden.com. 6 February 2011 <http://www..quotegarden.com/imagination.html>. 

10 of My Muses
1) False Hope
2) Temptation
3) Trees
4) Water
5) What If
6) Unrequited Love
7) Other Talent Writers
8) Conversation
9) Another's Personality
10) Words