Resource-Loading the Muses

It's amazing how the universe conspires to pound you with a particular message when you really need to hear it.

"I want to write" has been my mantra for more than 20 years. Granted, it was a hobby when I was in school, but I've had professional writerly aspirations for at least the last five. And how much writing have I accomplished in that time? Not a whole lot.

But I'm getting serious about it now, and I'm frequenting podcasts and web communities that provide something of a support group for fledgling professional writers. What message am I getting from all of them? "Stick your butt in the chair and keep it there until you've written something." Not very glamorous, I know, but it's the truth.

This principle flies in the face of the romantic ideas others have about a writer's life:

Writers are at the mercy of the Muses, and cannot write until struck with inspiration.

After inspiration strikes, writers scribble out the Great American Novel in one long manic creative episode.

The saddest tragedy of a writer's life is writer's block.

It's all a pack of lies.

In reality, creativity is like the bicep; it has to be exercised regularly before it can reach incredible heights. A "writer" who waits for inspiration before getting started is like a body-builder who expects to bench-press 300 lbs. on his first day at the gym. It's impossible.

If you want to write, then you have to write, even when you think you have nothing to say. Eventually kernels of ideas will form themselves, but you have to be there, in the right mind-set, ready to catch them as they come at you. Scratching your head in the local pub all night isn't going to do it. So write. Yes, it will be drivel. But eventually you will find that you really do have something to say, and then you can chop out those first 500 words of nonsense and have something respectable.

And there's no such thing as writer's block. As Neil Gaiman says, you can get stuck on something. Your innocent bystander may transform herself into a serial killer before your eyes and muck up your carefully constructed plot line. You may discover that azalea nectar is poisonous (It is, by the way. Don't ask me how I know.) and have to go back to the drawing board for your plot surrounding a new designer beverage. In any case, you're stuck on that particular thing, but you're not struck dumb on every writing task in existence. So write your way out of your problem, or work on something else and let your subconscious churn away for a while. Either way, You. Keep. Writing. Otherwise, you'll never have your brain in the proper mind-set to work itself out of whatever it is you're stuck on.

In an earlier post, I asked what I thought was a rhetorical question: How do you resource-load a Muse? The answer is: invite her to the party. She'll always show up, even if she is a little late.