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A visit from your muse: the gift you give yourself. by Ruth Harris“What The Subconscious is to every other man, in its creative aspect becomes, for writers, The Muse.” ~ Ray Bradbury What Ray Bradbury called the muse, Stephen King called the “guys in the basement.” Others call it the sixth sense, the Spidey sense, intuition, superpower, or the subconscious. Whatever you call it, your subconscious—the thoughts you don’t know you’re thinking—is what makes the magic happen. These unknown thoughts occur below the level of our ordinary, everyday awareness. They consist of our memories and experiences—all the interesting, offbeat, repellent, lurid, provocative, seductive, and enlightening content that rushes past in a torrent every day. This rich mixture of the half-forgotten, barely remembered, and even repressed is original and unique to each one of us, as individual as fingerprints. These unrecognized thoughts announce themselves in different ways and at different times. Sometimes while we’re in the shower, on the highway, in a class, in a dream or fantasy or a nightmare. Often during those drowsy moments when we’re just about to fall asleep or when we first wake up, relaxed, our minds still unguarded. Sometimes these buried thoughts shout. Sometimes they whisper. They leave clues everywhere, tapping us on the shoulder or bopping us on the nose just to make sure we’re paying attention. They speak in different languages and like Joseph Campbell’s hero, they appear to us disguised by a thousand faces, some foreign, some familiar. Signs Of The MuseThe story you can’t get out of your mind.It’s the one that wakes you up at night and intrudes when you really should be paying attention at that meeting or getting that boring report finished. The chapter you’re bogged down on and hate writing.Pay attention. Is your subconscious sending up a warning and telling you you’re on the wrong track? Do you need to go back and figure out where you’ve strayed? The character who says or does something so amazing, awful or awesome that s/he surprises you.Even though you created him or her, you’re appalled, impressed and/or intimidated. The dazzling plot twist you never saw coming.Even though you yourself planted the trail of clues that made it inevitable (and obvious) but only in retrospect. Where did that come from? How or when did you do it? You were the pilot but your muse was the engine. The “perfect” word pops into your mind from “out of nowhere.”Or the phrase you didn’t plan gets you past the cliché and you realize that you are beginning to develop a style of your own. The minor character waiting at the bus stop.The guy with the green umbrella you stuck in without thinking, but who turns out to be exactly the culprit/lover/villain/hero/heroine you need 150 pages later. When you throw away the outline.Because what your characters say or do when you actually start to write about them are a thousand times better and more interesting than you ever imagined. The dazzling idea that flashes through your mind so fast it almost disappears the moment it becomes conscious.That’s a whisper. Better write it down! You might think you’ll remember, but you probably won’t. Like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs, you mark a trail through the forest.Not really thinking, you leave them as you write—the red-haired tap dancer who lives upstairs, the elegant, panelled room in an ordinary suburban tract house, the half-heard whisper at intermission in the theater. They’re the unexpected inspirations that can come back later and help create a great story. The days you are “in the zone.”When writing feels effortless and the words pour out as fast as you can get them down, you have lowered the gates and allowed your muse to range free. When your Muse has Gone AWOLThis is when you can’t get out of your own way. Have you been feeling hurried, harried or harassed? Overwhelmed, out of control and stressed out? Are you stuck? Or blocked? Or just in a rut? Feel frustrated and about to give up? Don’t. Don’t give up and don’t give in. Shake up your routine. Synch your work habits with those of your muse.Your muse will not react well when you are tired, short of sleep or just dragging through the week. Some muses work better in the morning, others perform at their best later in the day or at night. Don’t expect your night owl muse to be perky and creative early in the AM and don’t ask your crack-of-dawn muse to come to your rescue at midnight. Give your muse a break.Try a yoga class, take some time out for meditation or a massage, unload the dishwasher, mow the lawn, or simply get up and take a walk. Getting away from what’s bugging you will calm you and let the ideas or words you need bubble to the surface. Inspire your muse.
Focusing on details can open up the subconscious
Trust your muse.Even when you don’t know exactly why and even when you think s/he has abandoned you. Your subconscious a.k.a. your muse knows more than you do. It’s what gives you that eerie, mysterious sense of knowing without knowing. Steve Jobs called it “more powerful than intellect.” Isabel Allende counsels: “Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.” Stephen King in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft said the same thing in more words: “Don’t wait for the muse. As I’ve said, he’s a hardheaded guy who’s not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn’t the Ouija board or the spirit-world we’re talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ’til noon. or seven ’til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up.” by Ruth Harris (@RuthHarrisBooks) March 25, 2018 What about you, scriveners? What do you do to get that magic flowing? Has your muse ever gone AWOL? What surprising magic has your muse brought to you? BOOK OF THE WEEKThe NYT bestseller is now absolutely FREE! Love And Money, sweeping in scope yet intimate in detail, is a story of family, secrets, murder, envy, and healing.
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I live in the Hammer. (We consider smog a condiment in Hamilton.) My muse carries a lunch box and yells at me a lot. She may be Italian grandmother running Mob Town. I try to lose her somewhere between the steel plants, but she always manages finds me and- whoops, that’s her yelling now. Gotta go. (great column, Ruth!)
Melodie—We’re dealing with the hero(oine) with a thousand faces. It’s not easy. 😉
Thanks for this. So many writerly bits of advice focus on the nail-downable specifics. I’m a firm believer that often the unknowable, the unsearchable are the elements we can most trust. Einstein said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
What he said.
CS—Ditto! AE was no fool. 🙂
CS—The WordPress elves are being cranky and weird, and they’re not letting Ruth comment 🙁
Here’s what she tried to post: “CS—Ditto! AE was no fool. :-)”
HI CS! And thanks, Anne!
Great tips, as I am a little bit stuck and needed this.
I had a minor character with no name show up for a brief moment. He soon became a major character and lasted for the rest of the book. It happens!
Alex—Thanks. Yes, exactly. Happens all the time—if you let it. IME *always* better than anything I can come up with!
My muse loves showing up when I’m either in the shower, or on the bus. He passes on his words of wisdom and then goes off to do whatever it is he does when he’s not with me. I like to think he’s pottering around Middle England solving crimes.
Icy—solving crimes & other dilemmas is where muses excel. They’re so much smarter than we are!
I gave up long ago on outlines. Now I start with an idea, a couple of characters, and where I think the story will end up (though often it’s somewhere else!) and just write. I love when I get up after a couple of hours (or more) and have to re-read what I typed because I wasn’t really conscious of what I was doing. I just let the “muse” take over… so many times things happen or people arise that I never would have thought of on my own.
I think of my muse as a fallow field. Everything I see and do and experience becomes the fodder that’s plowed under to fertilize my creativity. Eventually, both weeds and flowers grow; my subconscious picks an assorted bouquet and presents it to my conscious mind. Then I sit down at my computer and just have fun!
Thanks for a great post, Ruth!
Susan—sometimes it feels like magic, doesn’t it? Thanks for the excellent fallow field analogy—just perfect!
Thanks, Ruth, my muse has been excited lately — I say it’s because Mercury is retrograde, so communication is discombobulated. It’s like the floodgates are opened. I also attribute lost thoughts being found to my muse, as in strolling through the grocery, getting everything on the list, and then careening down an aisle, and stopping before a particular item that I wanted to get, but forgot to write on the list. I thank my muse and head home.
As a kid, my muse showed up late afternoon. As a young adult, around 2am. After 5 decades, back to afternoon and again at early evening.
I often get characters, with no story. They show up full-blown, ready to do business — and I have to ask: so, where do you live? what do you do? why are you here?
I don’t feel like my muse ever leaves me – but I do manage to block the way into my head…so it seems like they’ve left. Yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s more than one stalking me…
A fun post, Ruth, and timely for me, as the knocking on my skull started yesterday afternoon…
thanks
Maria D’Marco
Maria—thank you for the detailed and very interesting description of when and where your muse is active/available. Mine tends to arrive when I’m working—not before and not after. Thanks again!
My muse is currently AWOL and she’s driving me crazy. Come back, I say. Now!
Darlene—been there. Felt the same way. Not sure muses respond to orders, though. They’re ornery that way!
This is a wonderful post. For the first time ever, for my last book I simply sat down, had a very vague idea of what to write, and then just told the story as if I was sitting in front of a group of kids and was asked to “tell a tale”. I don’t outline anyway, but usually I have way more info than I did this time. And I loved this book more than any other. I wrote the story as it came to me. It was great!
Patricia—thanks and thanks, too, for sharing your experience. Once again, another example of the astonishing power we don’t even know we have.
I used to have a ton o’ fun with my muse in a kinky sex kind of way (my very 1st blog is peppered with posts featuring my muse as a dominatrix) early on. Then she kind of tapered off for a few years, but came roaring back to life as the dominatrix that I’ve come to know and love.
Currently she’s on a well deserved vacation while I’m busy mucking about with my latest novel. I’m expecting her to reappear to help spice up my 2nd novel once I get around to working on the 2nd draft (and beyond).
In the meantime, I keep myself occupied and occasionally send her short notes by taking either short walks around the mall, short walks around town and short walks around my office building.
G.B.—ooooh! Maybe she’s not on vacation. Maybe she’s out getting new whips and chains. Maybe you should be taking longer walks. 😉
Ruth,
Love this. I’m a big believer in the power of the subconscious. There’s often a seed on p. 27 I didn’t even realize I’d dropped until it bears fruit on p. 235.
When I’m stumped, I go for a walk. Don’t necessarily think about the problem, but when I get back, the solution has always come to me. Fresh air, getting the blood and muscles moving–works every time.
But my subconscious also has a bratty streak. It’s most apt to pop out a great idea when I’m least able to write it down–in the dentist’s chair, for instance.
Thanks for doing a great job of explaining an ephemeral concept that’s hard to put in words but oh so real.
Debbie—thanks! The idea for this post came when I was stuck on a scene and only figured out the solution when I went back and realized I’d given myself the solution 100+ pages earlier but didn’t know it. I tried to explain the phenomenon in a down-to-earth way.
Great post. I so believe in the MUSE. I keep pan and paper handy at all times so she won’t go away and I won’t forget.
Beth—Thanks and ditto. Couldn’t agree more! I always have pen & paper with me, near me, on me. Just call me the notebook queen. 🙂
Love the post.
It’s great to be reminded that a MUSE doesn’t have to be a plot whispered in my ear, or characters talking in my head. Muses work in mysterious ways. 🙂
Morgan—Thanks! Muses *are* mysterious. Part of our job is being attentive to the clues they drop. They can be sneaky little devils. 🙂
I’ve been developing and strengthening my relationship with my subconscious muse for as long as I’ve been writing. It’s like a calling.
Robert—You’re right. Do you have any tips to share about how you go about developing the muse relationship?
Good question, Ruth. The core of the muse and inspiration are a mystery to me, and I think it’s the pursuit of that mystery that drives me. The best way I can put it is that I consciously tap into my unconscious. Hope that sheds light.
Thanks, Robert. Einstein is quoted as saying that his work was 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. I tend to think that reaching the subconscious tends to be a consequence of persistence. Much as Isabel Allende & Stephen King say.
Yes! Persistence! Also vital to writing.
Vital to writing—and anything else worth doing. A basic fact of life!
Loved this Ruth, especially the part about the muse who takes a powder and leaves us in the lurch. My muse took a Christmas vacation and never came back, lol. The year started off in turmoil for me and sadly, stress wouldn’t give me anything to want to write about. But my month long escape to sun and sea has given me new life – lots of notes and reading will pay off when I return next week.:)
DG—sounds like you—and your muse—are raring to go! 🙂
The engines are revving! 🙂
Inspiration can hit from anywhere (and sometimes at the most unappropriated times). Hence why they tell us writers to have pen and paper always handy.
I don’t think I am the only one who is struggling with a plot point or scene, goes to bed and… Boom! Wake up in the middle of the night with a solution.
Let’s pray the muses never leave us. I will keep showing up as long as they do.
Great post, Ruth!
~Ingmar Albizu
Ingmar—thank you! So true! Muses work on *their* schedule—not ours. Ergo the notebook on the night table. 🙂
I’ve come late to this party — back injury, but better now — and I found this post so enlightening in many ways. I didn’t really have a name for it, but you absolutely nailed the “down to earth” description of what it is that makes the magic. The heroine of my second book was a “throw-away” character in the first (the daughter’s college roommate, who knew?). But there she is, finding herself, her ancestor for whom she sought, and her true, forever love. She’s now featuring prominently in my third book in the series, a work in progress as of yet.
Thank you, Muse. And thank YOU, Ruth.
Patricia—Happy to hear you’re feeling better! Thank *you* for the excellent example of the workings of inner mind (the subconscious). We don’t know what we’re doing sometimes, but find out later that we’ve created gold for ourselves. The “throwaway” daughter’s college roommate turned out very well for you—led you to THREE books!
If I may offer this, I like to torture a misbehaving muse with Sudoko, Tow or three games and she is back in line and ready to play nice. Something about putting the subconscious on cruise control refuels it. Sudoko then a dog walk, by the time I am back at the key board and the dog is tuckered, The characters are ready to roll.
PS. please sed this article to all those blogs out there that promote the ten ways to out line, or the precision of plot points, or the vast archive of character questions. They need to let their muse free.
Sam—Excellent! Torture hasn’t occurred to me, but a real attention-getter! My muse heard you and is now cowering under my desk. So far, getting up and moving around (unload dishwasher, do laundry, etc) helps. In extreme cases, actually going outside for a walk makes the difference. 🙂