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What's your muse?

WyrdMystic

Inkling
I'm interested in hearing where people find their muse. Where the spark of creativity stems from. I've seen the same advice plastered everywhere...read, read, read. That's great, but personally I find it difficult to read books while I'm mid-project as I have a terrible fear of it influencing my work. So, my question. When you get to that point where you can't see the wood for the trees, the words for the letters, how do you ignite your creative fires?
 

Chilari

Staff
Moderator
You can read without reading fiction. I'm currently reading a book about the origins of Islam (Tom Holland's In the Shadow of the Sword) which is fascinating. Don't avoid inspiration because you already have an idea; make a note of new ideas, keep it somewhere safe, and come back to it later when you need ideas.

That's where I get much of my inpiration for worldbuilding or scenarios: history. Anything that's going, really. TV programmes about the Vikings or the Romans (Mary Beard was great in the recent BBC miniseries Meet the Romans, and being a Cambridge professor she knows her shit) or the Bronze Age. Books on all sorts of things (though Tom Holland really is very good at making things interesting and engrossing - Persian Fire was an utter masterpiece) or even my own researches when I'm working on an article for my tumblr (though that has fallen by the wayside recently) because it's amazing the little details you can find out about ancient societies when you go looking.

My other source of inspiration, more from the characterisation and character interactions and emotions side of things, is music. the way it makes me feel, the emotions portrayed. My favourites are the songs that produce in me different reactions depending on how I already felt, or based on interpretations of the lyrics. There's one Mumford and Sons song that inspires emotions relating to anger and vengeance, or the sense that "I'm strong in spite of you", depending on my feelings and interpretation at the time. i generally quickly associate an album with a story which helps me get into the mood for writing. Music can protray such a variety of emotions, and inspire just as many (though they don't always line up) that it can't fail to be a muse for me. if I don't particularly feel like writing, but know I mst, I put on the right album and open the document, and soon the words are flowing.
 
I'm told that the very best way to sustain a strong spark of creativity is to daily remind yourself that your rent/mortgage, food on the table, and other similar niceties rely on completing your work and getting it sold. ;)

Alternately, go to school, graduate with a BA in English, and go work in the primary job of that major (which involves asking the question "would you like fries with that" quite often). Working such a job will be a strong motivating force to get you to spend all the time writing that you possibly can. ;)
 

WyrdMystic

Inkling
Haha...whatever floats your boat I suppose. I have a job like that, though more of the 'would you like a pie chart with that?' variety. This method gets me half way, then it becomes more of a hinderance for me personally. I think I pile on too much pressure to get it done too quickly. Hoping joining Mythic Scribes is going to free me up to start vomiting words again.
 
Something to remember is that a writing career can span decades, if you want. LOTS of decades. So don't stress about having to get it all done yesterday. Give yourself time to write, to grow as a writer, and to produce good work.
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
This may sound strange but my muse is accountability.

I have a spreadsheet that I update at the end of every night with the number of words I wrote that day. Any writing absences are also recorded. It helps me stay on track because I can see the overall word count grow. I notice the few blank spots on the page and they irk me. I decided that if I want to be a professional, I have to approach my writing as a professional and show up for work every single day with rare exceptions.

Once I threw the idea of inspiration out the window I became a better writer.

Your question could be asking where ideas come from if you don't want to read while writing so your work isn't influenced. If that is more the case then ignore the top portion. In this case, I'd say don't worry about it. Read all you can. Read everything you can, across all genres. Little pieces of others work will seep into yours but only after its been swallowed & digested to come out as something truly your own.... Bad analogy I know... Hopefully it won't be crap.

Most people find their own voice after imitating authors they like. Don't sweat being influenced. Influence = progress. We all build off of the work of others, regardless of industry or art.
 
I've been open about the fact that several of my stories are essentially songs, just de-musiced and recontextualized. "Five Conversations" is "Blue", "Eternal" is "Buy Me a Rose", "Powerless" is "Master of Your Fate", and so on. In fact, I literally couldn't write "Five Conversations" until I found "Blue" to act as a framework for it--I couldn't pin down my original idea to fit a rigid plot.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
About five years back I wrote this about my muse. I posted this on Mythic Scribes before , but I can't remember the thread. Any way a little rant from the past me.

The muse is a big fat lazy witch that wants to do nothing but eat bon-bons and watch Oprah all day long. That right I said it.

After finishing my first novel and doing rewrites to it, I found that I achieved so much more if I didn’t wait around for her, my muse, to get up off the crumb riddled couch. Sometimes you just have to write whether you’re feeling it or not. You put on the greased stained, wife-beater, tank top, grab that witch by the hair, drag her to the computer, and pound her into submission with each key stroke. (Note: author does not condone wife beating)

This isn’t to say that the muse and inspiration doesn’t have their place, but I’ve come to the realization that those things alone will only take you so far before you hit a wall, and you’re left with two choices in my opinion: start something else that you’re “inspired” about or roll up the sleeves and go to work.

As I’m going through the rewrites to my novel, I find myself remembering things said by my collage writing teacher. He told the class that one of the purposes of writing for the course was to empty ourselves. I wasn’t sure what he meant back then, but I think I have an idea now. You see, as you write, the more you write, you purge yourself of all the pent up ideas, all the preconceptions and expectations that get built up over time about what you want to write and how you want to write it. This allows you to just write and let the words come instead of forcing them to be this or that instead of what they should be. In some ways, I think this means that you’re purging yourself of the dependence on the muse to get you to write, or to make your writing “good”.

The more writing I do in the “uninspired” state the more I realize that the “uninspired” writing can be equal if not better than the “inspired” writing. I find that things that I wrote while “uninspired,” which I thought were complete trash, turn out, when looking at them from an objective eye, to be rather good. I’ve also found that the reverse is true too. Things I wrote while inspired, which I thought were brilliant, turn out to be trash. This brings me to the thought/theory that I have, maybe, this is one of the things that separates a “successful” writer from a “struggling” one. The “struggler” can only write when they are inspired and passionate, while the “successful” one can write no matter the mental state. They can just do it. Just a thought.
 

Saigonnus

Auror
I find inspiration in just about anything or anywhere I happen to be. Maybe I see a strangely painted car and think "That's an eye-wrenching color combo... perfect for the gypsy wagon in chapter 5". Perhaps I see a house and looking at the design makes me think of how i'd incorporate similar styles into the fantasy world. That is simply the way it works for me; a little thing can inspire larger things in the scheme of my writing.
 

Aravelle

Sage
My muse is a stubborn mule in the mud.
Seriously. It doesn't like to budge even with the enticement of most music and other books. Videogames help sometimes though.
 
Most of my ideas seem to come from things in the real world that anger me or that I care passionately about. Then I just start creating a world that (to me at least) is really interesting. By the time I've added detail to the world and populated it a plot seems to form naturally from the world and its inhabitantants.
 

CupofJoe

Myth Weaver
It might be trite to say but my muse is my dreams/daydreams and the landscape I live in.
I go walking and let my mind wander. In the autumn we get incredible mists around here and it is easy to make the black tops of hills gigantic beasts or car lights on a road an army marching. in the summer we can get huge skies so it is easy to think of dragons soaring or days on the endless steppes...
Right now I've got a new street light outside my home so i have a story about 24hours of daylight stuck and trying to escape...
 

Chilari

Staff
Moderator
Joe, you're right about the mists. Driving to Stafford this morning I saw the most incredibly beautiful mists just as the sun was coming up. I could tell how far away the trees on the ridges were based on how faded they were in the mists. Shame I couldn't get a photo - it's times like that I want to buy a really good camera and become a professional photographer.
 

SeverinR

Vala
My hair is natural, I don't use muse.

jk.

Inspiration is everywhere and everything. Writing is life, and life is in everything.
There was even a song that said "Live is life". In truth, writing is life.

You live life, and take out the interesting parts and make a story out of it. Life in general hasn't changed over the years. We have common goals. We don't have to worry about disease and starving during hardtimes like they did in the past but, we still have similar goals.

Write about what you live, what you see, what you read, what you hear, what you see in the movies, what you see on tv, what you hear from others(anecdotes.), fables, lore, urban legends, etc. Write as if you werea cook, and you use everything in your cabinet to season your story.
 
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