The Muse is always with us!

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This morning I was sitting in the car with my nephew and my sister. My nephew was telling us how to make an enchanted book (please note - I think that all books are enchanted, but I digress). It involved a magic potion that included 2 phoenix feathers (one from a fire-phoenix and one from a not-fire-phoenix), a golden coin, and a magic dart to name a few of the ingredients.

I won’t give them all away - I am pretty sure that he will be wanting to patent it. This led to a long conversation about the different types of phoenix, and I asked the question (after hearing several categories) what colour was a flower phoenix. He explained (quite impatiently) that obviously, a flower phoenix changes colour every 60 seconds, depending on the flowers that were around. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my sister grab her ever present notebook, and scribble - the conversation was giving her ideas. 

Heck it was giving me ideas! I had a few errands to run, but I basically rushed back home to type this up, as I thought it would be the perfect introduction to the lesson of today, which also happens to be the first in a new series I am writing.

This year I celebrated 4 years of blogging, and I decided that over the next year, I am returning to my roots, blogging at least once a week, and returning to writing about lessons - one of my favourite things to do. So over the next year, I want to write 10 lessons I learned about writing during 4 years of blogging, and a lifetime love affair with words - reading, editing and writing essays, assignments, books, short stories, unfinished stories, emails and letters, to name a few. 

Today is lesson number one, and it has been one of the most important lessons I learned. One of my biggest challenges in writing books over the years - until I wrote my first book - was ideas. I felt like I didn’t have enough good ones, and that was obviously what I needed if I wanted to write good books. I will be writing about good ideas (and if they are even necessary to write good books - at least in my opinion) later down in this series. But today, I want to write about where I get my ideas - good bad or otherwise - and my feelings about the muse.

The muse is always with us

When I was at school, I loved learning “Classics” and reading about Greek mythology, and I believe it was at this time I learned about the idea of a “muse”. I can’t remember exactly what I learned about it then, but my understanding of the muse was a creative inspiration that visited you - almost like a fairy that came bringing the ideas on her wings that could lead you to produce great creative work - music, poetry or writing to name a few. I also heard of artists who would meet someone beautiful, and she would become their muse, the person whose face inspired their work. 

And a couple of years ago, I remember reading “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert (or let’s be honest - I started it but didn’t finish it!) and one of the ideas that she talked about was similar to that of a muse - speaking about how she believed that ideas were out there, and that they chose a writer, and if for some reason you don’t use the idea, it will go off to someone else who does. I was fascinated when I heard her writing about this, and she even gave an example of a story that she started, and didn’t finish, and meeting someone who had the same idea (or very similar) shortly after she stopped writing, and who ran with it (or wrote with it.)

I like this concept of a muse, or how Elizabeth Gilbert described ideas coming to you. And I will admit that there are some times I feel way more inspired than others, and I have definiteley experienced ideas coming to me (mostly in the shower or when I am driving or walking). The first few months of this year, I definitely felt uninspired, and I wrote very little. However, later in the year often seems to be my jam, and I have written in Nanowrimo for the past 3 years, and during those 3 Novembers alone, I have completed 4 books. 

However, I also sometimes think that these theories about the muse, ideas and inspiration give the idea that it is something rare, and only gifted to a certain few - those “creative” ones in the world who would know what to do with it. And one lesson I have learned is that inspiration isn’t as fickle as I like to believe, nor is it only gifted to special, creative, unique types. Instead, I have found that inspiration is all around us, and that our biggest gifts as creatives are observation and curiosity. 

I learned this lesson a few summers ago, after taking 6 week writing challenge from Sarah Selecky, a fellow author and writing coach. Every week, she would send out writing prompts in the form of pictures, and we were invited to write for 10 minutes a story inspired by the pictures. It could be that we use the person in the pictures as a character, or the place as a setting, or it could be that we didn’t. The pictures in the challenge were photos, and as I took part in the challenge it occurred to me - these pictures could have been taken anywhere. And the same way that I looked at them every week and became inspired to write stories, I could look into the world around me, and find similar inspiration.

I began to do just that - look for inspiration on my morning walks, as I observed people at the beach, in the conversations I had with friends and strangers, as I considered culture and current events, and in books I read, podcasts I listened to, and movies I watched. It was such a simple yet remarkable discovery. At any moment, if I desired, inspiration was all around me. It transformed my writing practice, and the more I sought ideas from what was around me, the more I noticed them there, hiding in plain sight. 

I got blog ideas, book ideas, even ideas for other people. And as an added bonus, I also noticed that the more I wrote, the more ideas came to me! It made me rethink how I felt about the muse, and whether I believed that I could ever run out of ideas. I was reminded of a conversation I had with a close friend, when I once told her that I felt as if God was speaking to me, something I felt started happening to me a few years ago, and she proclaimed - maybe he was always speaking to me, and I had only just started listening. 

That is how I feel about the muse now. She is always there, whispering to us - through the trees, flowers and sunsets; in the conversations we are having, in the music we listen to. She is always with us, and when we pause and give her the gift of our attention, we are rewarded with her constant inspiration that is there for the taking, when we are ready to receive. And it’s ok if we aren’t ready. She isn’t going anywhere.

I encourage you today to give some time and attention to the muse, and see what she is inspiring you to do! Let me know in the comments.

And I send you big love from a small island.

PS I love to take photos on my walks (as I’m getting inspired) and I dropped a few above for you.

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