Not All Muses Are the Same
Every writer I spoke to in my twenties said they began writing when they were a child and that they just had a connection with words. It was a wistful frenzy of literary allure pulling them to the page. Not once did the Muse ever stray from their prodigious and innocent grade school hands; it stayed on during awkward and callous middle school growth spurts, surpassed the sordid obstacles of high school social norms, and navigated the squalls of cabalistic college, if one was so unlucky to attend. And then still, inspiration throughout the trudging dark mass of adulthood.
Every writer. Every one of them.
Liars.
I didn’t feel the Muse envelop me in their inspiring arms at any stage of my life. They checked in on me from time to time like an older sibling would only because Mom said so. They stuck around for a few because they felt sorry for how sad I looked at thirteen trying to create the most Nobel Prize-winning paragraph on a Brother typewriter. Then throw shame at me and run out of the room evading my futile retaliation. I would later find out that this Muse, this attitudinal personality disorder, is the Muse of writers. This is the Muse of writers clawing through the mucky sandpit of oversaturated markets, we burrowing word goblins battling semi-colons and fucking em dashes.
But…
The Muse was still there. They came back and sat in the corner, messed with my shit as I wrote poems, essays, novellas, one-page flash-fiction (my favorite), and blog posts. That infrequent scoundrel whispered little gems here and there. It turned the light switch on and off at the most inconvenient times, most often absent a pen. When I did have a writing tool, I wrote furiously. I knew at any moment the Muse would leave me again in the dark.
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However, not all muses are the same. Not all muses are imaginary creatures we curse at when they ignore our requests to find another word that explains the feeling of another word you can’t seem to find in a thesaurus. Some muses are real-world people or everyday situations. They are unaware of their inspirational superpowers.
Even if we heard the thing, the zinging phrase of aha, four hundred and eighty-nine times, it was the four hundred and ninetieth time the real-world Muse spoke and catapulted the next writing session into fifth gear.
One of mine said, wait for it, “I had thoughts — I wrote them down.”
Orgasmic.
Muses are the taco truck cooks who make fun of you because you can’t roll your r’s to ask for salsa verde but then proceed to tell you a story about their abuela who makes the best version of that salsa.
Muses are the dragonflies that buzz around ponds near sunset during a children’s soccer game, accidentally fly into a parent’s mouth causing them to choke, and almost die because they yelled at the referee to call offsides, even though it wasn’t. Any decent news station would have a field day with that. See what I did there?
Muses are the inspirational acting monologues you see onscreen, even though your loving mother said it to you eight seconds ago when she was trying to connect with you. Yet you missed it because you’re a selfish jackwagon. She writes it down in her journal for you to hopefully read one day, sending you down a shame spiral for the rest of your life. Muse-worthy.
Whether you wait for the Muse or use the ones around you, remember that YOU have thoughts, dammit! Write them down! Don’t let them escape into the foggy ether for someone else’s pickpocket muse to pluck out of the air. Next, deliver those words so insatiably that your invisible Muse comes back into your room. And instead of being a total cur, they nod in your general direction and say, “I can hang out, you know, if you want, but only if you’re not gonna cry like a loser.”
You sigh, accept, and get back to writing.
