Mysterious Monday: My Muse

I often talk with my friends about my muse—the amount and quality of my writing is directly proportional to her presence. When she is around and in writing mode, I can get thousands of words written; just check out my NaNoWriMo wins (2 for 2). When she is not around, the words simply do not come. But who or what is a muse?

The muses were the ancient Greek goddesses of the arts & sciences. They were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. One odd thing I found , though, in researching these goddesses, was that there was not a muse of story-telling, per se. Calliope is the closest, as the muse of epic poetry and sometimes also of eloquence.

Clio was the muse of historical poetry, Eratos the muse of love poetry. Any one of these three could be said to be behind my own inspiration, along with maybe Urania, the muse of astronomy. I say this because I write historical as well as science fiction romance.

At the moment, my muse is being flighty. One day she’s here, giving me plenty of writing ammo, the next, she’s nowhere to be found. Yesterday, I had plenty of time to write, but my eyes were so sore and I spent most of the day in a state of physical and mental exhaustion, to the point that this blog entry was all that I was able to produce, with effort. Despite a nap and taking ibuprofen, I was unable to get over the heaviness of my eyelids and the sheer exhaustion. 

Saturday, I was only able to fit in about 150 words in an erotic short. The only thing I could think of that was different from the previous week was that I did not exercise this week-end. I’ve also been waiting up for my teen to get out of work, sometimes as late as midnight, and still getting up between 5:30 & 6:00 in the morning.

This week, my husband is back home and so I will not have to burn the candle at both ends as much. I am hoping that the increase in sleep hours to something resembling human normal will tempt Miss Muse back into the fold. If not, then I will try some exercises that I’ve read about, starting with re-reading and editing a bit of one of my finished stories.

All I need to get back on track and catch up with the Little Bites Challenge is an additional 656 words. I am going to include any side writing, so long as it’s fiction, so in actuality, I only have 508 to go since I am including the erotic short. Just over 500 words if Miss Muse is around is nothing, really. Despite the rest of my life that is whirling around me like the Tasmanian Devil in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Wish me luck—see you all Wednesday!