How to work your Muse

Begin by choosing a muse. Calliope, perhaps, if you’re into the Greeks, or a more current writer you admire. Maybe you think Margaret Atwood with her Canadian mystique is the be-all end-all of writers and her short story, Happy Endings, is the greatest piece of writing ever and that you could never write as well as she does. If this is true, take my advice and don’t choose Atwood as your muse or you will forever be in shadow instead of light. What about Hemingway? Do you aspire to write alone... in the rain? Then Hemingway might be your choice. What about Stephen Hoffenfeffer? What, you’ve never heard of him? This brings us to one of the few rules. Your muse should not be an unknown struggling along the path toward their goal. Your muse needs to be worthy of the greatness to which you aspire, but a muse does not need to be human or even alive though I do not recommend choosing drink. You may get a great story about your struggle toward recovery to share with the others in rehab, but probably not a lot more than that. Chocolate, on the other hand, is acceptable.

Once you’ve decided upon a worthy muse, you can begin hitting them up for support. Tell them your story or character woes. Do you need to figure out why four sets of identical twins were involved in a multiple car collision? Ask your muse for help, then listen, for the answer may come in the form of a snippet from a news story or the juxtaposition of two cover stories at the magazine stand. Worried about why a character cannot find happiness after winning the lottery and being crowned Miss USA? Your muse may direct you to a child swinging alone on a playground. You realize your character was abandoned while a youth and this explains everything you’ve been trying to say. Or you may think your protagonist needs some grief, then your muse nudges you into grabbing your significant other’s coat for a run out to the mailbox to check for acceptance letters from the New Yorker. Reaching into the pockets, you find a few wrapped chocolates and you realize your character is involved with an addict. It is perfectly acceptable to eat the chocolate while mulling this over.

Certainly, the main purpose of your muse is to stand at your shoulder ready to be called, but they can also serve a greater function. If you take that nagging little voice of criticism that lives inside you, the one that insists your writing is crap, and hand it to your muse, they will subdue it in a stranglehold. They will not allow the critic to speak. They will not even allow the critic to catch a glimpse of what you put down on the page. Your muse will allow you the freedom to let the thoughts spill free even if they seem to have no bearing on the story. Especially if they seem to have no bearing on the story.

Choose and then use your muse wisely and one day you’ll say, “I left the window open and rain dappled the pages of my first draft. I looked at the spots and realized my heroine needed to die. It was like Hemingway was in the room with me.”