My Muse

My muse needs a little lube.

When she’s feelin’ easy, a cup of choco-peppermint java does the trick. When she’s feelin' sassy, a margarita will turn her into a motor-mouth. Sometimes though, she’s just not in the mood to be giving up the inspiration.

**insert image of me staring at blank screen**

I can’t sit around waiting for lightning to strike! I’ve got deadlines.

Worst of all is when she’s in some bitchy PMS mode. As in Providing Me Shit mode. That’s the “good” idea that can’t possibly work because of some magic/world construct that I set up earlier, but which I do not realize until the passage is completely written.

When she’s PMS-ing or simply not in the mood, sweet talk won’t work. When she’s like this, I have to do something drastic…like getting out the lighter fluid and soaking the bitch.

No, I don’t actually burn any little clay figures doused in a flammable liquid. But I do have to change tactics. *note: this implies taking action of some sort, not waiting it out*

Sometimes its easy. I open a new document and (disregard the blank page reference earlier)somehow a blank page that’s not really part of the manuscript doesn’t have the burden of living up to the rest of manuscript. It’s not really in the story, it’s just practice. If its good I can do a copy and paste. If it’s not, well, it never was a part of that manuscript anyway. Blank page can be a no pressure solution. But my muse may be getting wise to this trick.

Sometimes its quasi-easy. I go the immobile route and meditate. I light candles and incense and soak in a hot bubbly tub. I go plug in the guitar and jam until I’ve relived the late 80’s. I go through my media player and make a new playlist according to the problem scene. (action scene = action music)

Sometimes its semi-hard. I pull down some of my ‘how to write’ books and flip through passages that deal with the issue at hand. (beginning, middle, end; conflict, action, suspense; scene and sequel; character, etc.) A little refresher course doesn’t hurt, though when the answer is found there I do tend to scold myself because I should have known the answer already….

Sometimes its just freaking HARD. I mentally whine about it. I sit. I stand. I pace. I talk to myself until the dogs leave the room because they think I’m crazy. I punish my bad self with extra treadmill time: You have twenty minutes to mull this over. If you don’t have some kind of solution, you’re doing another twenty! *whip snap*

I think my muse gets off on makin’ me work for it. She knows I’ll listen; I know she’s got the goods.

Writers in general speak about their muse, the source of their inspiration, creativity and ideas. I tease and say my muse needs to stop whoring around. Yeah, some ‘great’ ideas I’ve had that I thought were pretty unique turned out to not be quite so novel after all.

I’ve learned that comes with the territory. She’s not just whispering in my ear. She’s whispering in any ear that will listen because she’s all about being heard and the bottom line is, if I’m not working on something, she’s not whispering.

Happy Wednesday from your Hump Day Word Whore, Linda

AND HEY, LOOKIE! I was a Tuesday Teaser! YAY!!!!!!! http://falyndonaldson.com/2011/02/22/tuesday-teaser-arcane-circle/

Release Day: Rogue Oracle

By KAK

Buy Now from Amazon

The Muse. Fickle deity or scapegoat? Really, it’s like having a love-loathe relationship with accountability -- a relationship that means bupkis on days like today. 

Gasp.     Shriek.     The Blasphemy.

“Oh no she di-ient.”

“Shoowee, thassa some disrespect right thut thar.”

“Gurrl ain’t neva gonna see her muse again.”

Please, pluck the panties out of your crack.

I assure you my muse and I are doing the exact same thing today. We have a hot date with a Tarot-reading criminal profiler, a smexy G-man, and some Chernobyl blowback. Wha? I likes ‘em mystical, mysterious, and messy.

Today, my nutter-butters, is RELEASE DAY for ROGUE ORACLE by Alayna Willams! Oh, don’t let the purple eyeliner fool you, Alayna is none other than our beloved Monday Mariposa Laura Bickle. ROGUE ORACLE is the second book in her Delphic Oracle series. 

Uh-hunh. Oh yeah. Watch a sloth do a chair dance.

Yes, yes, cast your covetous gaze at the gal next to you on the Metro who is utterly engrossed in the first book, DARK ORACLE. We both know what happens after the garbled station announcement. There will be a sniff, a smirk, and a sashay out the mass-transit doors and straight to your local bookseller. You will seize ROUGE ORACLE and promptly proceed to read it at your desk… in front of that annoying mouth-breather in desperate need of a Tic-Tac.

Go. Go, go. I don’t want to keep you from devouring a spectacular Urban Fantasy laced with Cold War spy-tasticness.

No, really. Go. I have a book to read…and Muse to introduce to the Tower card.

Don’t forget to pick up other Word Whore recent releases:

A-Muse-Ing

by Jeffe Kennedy
I am not a writer who talks about her Muse.

Many writers do, I've noticed. They mention their muses, the voices in their heads, wrestling with that entity who brings them words - or maliciously withholds them. Some go so far as to name their muse and talk about what he or she looks like.

Of course, some people name their body parts, too, and I've never really gotten that fancy.

I want to say I've always known about the Muses. I've got my yellowed, broken-spined copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology, copyright 1940, with the 50₵ price printed timelessly on the cover. I bought it at a garage sale (hmm, second book here I've mentioned that I obtained that way), when I was a kid and read it cover to cover. I loved all the stories of the Greek gods, the pageantry and glamor.

In college, as part of my Religious Studies major, I took a course in Greek mythology and learned to think of the stories another way. Apollo isn't just some handsome, blond guy cruising around in a chariot; Aphrodite isn't some hot chick tossing apples at people; and the Muses are not a gaggle of chiffon-draped babes rollerskating to ELO.

This was a fundamental change in thinking for me: all of those deities represented parts of the human spirit. The stories are profound metaphors for how we interact with a random and sometimes cruel universe.

The nine Muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. She is the goddess of memory (from when mnemonic comes). Zeus has been glorified more over time - indeed, he went from fairly minor god in older histories to king of the Pantheon much later - but the most important aspect of Zeus is that he represents the bolt from the blue. He is the powerfully unexpected. It's worth noting that only Zeus can get away with outmaneuvering Fate.

So from these two concepts arise nine sisters, who were originally not individually named. Hesiod said of them:

They are all of one mind, their hearts are set upon song and their spirit is free from care...though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the Muses sings, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles. Such is the holy gift of the Muses.

I think that's the feeling we know, from losing ourselves in creating.

Later the Muses were more pigeonholed, as such:

Clio = history
Urania = astronomy
Melpomene = tragedy
Thalia = comedy
Terpsichore = dance
Calliope = epic poetry
Erato = love poetry
Polyhymnia = songs to the gods
Euterpe = lyric poetry

No wonder writers glommed onto the concept of the Muses - fully six of them represent writerly arts. It's mainly about poetry because Jane Austen hadn't invented the novel, yet. Still, I think this really points up that genres change over time.

The Muses accompanied Apollo, who functions as Truth. The Muses said, "We know how to speak false things that seem true, but we know, when we will, to utter true things."

Every writer knows what that's about.

I don't feel like I have a muse. I don't really hear voices in my head. They don't natter at me in the middle of the night. Sometimes I wake up with a lovely story in my head, but it feels more like a softly glowing gift than a burning drive.

By way of that, I also mean that I don't feel like I make up the stories by myself. Certainly I don't consciously plan them out. That's why I so often write about ritual and sacred space, creating the opportunity for divine inspiration to float in and settle like a rain of petals. (Zeus impregnated more than one maiden that way.)

The bolt from the blue is how you get around Fate.

Something to remember.