Saturday, December 15, 2012

Musings on Muses

Others have written before me - and very eloquently, I might add - on this subject, so I'll keep it brief.

Firstly, it's stupid to avoid writing because you're "waiting for inspiration to strike" or for your muse to suddenly make everything known to you.

Writing is not magic. Unfortunately.

The truth is, if you want to get results, you have to put in the effort yourself; do the work yourself. Your muse is not going to do it for you.

Except when it does.

I have a muse - or rather, I have a subconscious. When I get stuck on something in my writing  (and I mean really stuck, not just I've gotten lazy and don't want to work, but that I'm working and working and nothing is coming out right), it helps to let it go and work on something else or do something else for a little while. Sometimes it's an hour, and sometimes its a few days, but without fail there comes a time where suddenly my "muse" comes through and it all comes together in a rush.

Now what is really happening is that my brain is still working on my problem subconsciously, and when I come back to it it's been worked out. It's not magic, although as a fantasy buff I wouldn't mind if it was!

My brain likes to operate this way quite a lot of the time.

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