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!

Music and Muses

So yesterday, at my CFRWA meeting, we had a guest speaker whose topic was “Getting your Muse on Speed Dial”. Basically, the talk was about kick-starting your creativity. One of the ideas she put forth was using music or photos to get your imagination rolling.

First, she played a selection of 30 second bursts of different instrumental songs and told us to write whatever came to mind—a scene, a dialogue, a character description, whatever. Five selections of music later, I had five scenes written down.

Next, she put a picture up on the projector screen and had us write something about it. I didn’t get one word down. First of all, it took me most of our five minutes allotted time to figure out that the couple in the picture was holding wine glasses, not microphones. Then, I could not for the life of me figure out why the blonde guy in the background, who appeared to be injured, was making his way down the hill toward them. Turns out he was a zombie. It was, of course, a staged picture that has apparently been making its way around Twitter. It didn’t help that my eyes were killing me yesterday.

That exercise brought me to the stunning conclusion—well, stunning for me, because I forget things that I hear almost immediately, most notably and lamentably, names—that I am more auditory than visual. I may be incorrect in that evaluation. It may be that I am simply bored by things contemporary and/or zombie (sorry, but these two things are true, with the notable exception of soldiers). Perhaps a picture of a Navy SEAL coming out of the water... 

Where was I? Oh, yes, pictures. Maybe a picture of an archer lining up a shot in the forest or a spaceship hurtling toward a super-nova would have sparked me more. 

One thing she was very clear about—the music, for her, anyway, had to be without words. I cannot write when I’m hearing words with music, either, as I tend to sing along. Which got me to thinking; I’ve been using a lot of pagan metal to get me into the mood for a new story that’s come to my mind. Some of the music has words, but they are in languages that I don’t understand. At all. Languages like Irish, Russian, Swedish, Finnish. So, I’m going to try a little experiment. One day (this week, I hope), I am going to sit down for a writing sprint with my music. I will do this twice: once with instrumental only and once with the singers I don’t understand. I’m going to see if one or the other is easier or more difficult to write with.

What about you? Does your writing have a soundtrack? If so, do you prefer instrumental music only or do you prefer words?