Starting a day's writing can be very challenging. This is especially true when you are faced with a blank page and the tempting urge to crawl back to bed is so overwhelming. At times like these, you need your secret weapon. Your muse is the answer to getting rid of that initial fear.
Having someone else to blame is the most basic description of a muse. And most of the time, that is enough.
The author of Pray, Eat, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, gave an incredible TED talk on this subject, looking at what she referred to as 'the genius', the term taking from the Romans. However, muse is a Greek term which can be described as follows.
Muses in the ancient Greek were often portrayed as scantily clad women, inspiring through the arousal of sexual desire. But that wasn't their primary purpose. They were both the embodiment and the sponsors of the arts. If the muses chose to grant you the necessary skill and inspiration, you could produce great art.
The purpose of the muse was not to arouse inspiration within you, but rather to bestow inspiration and passion upon you. This is a very important distinction of roles. It was your responsibility to be open and willing to work when the inspiration was given, but it was her/his/its responsibility to give you that inspiration. If you sat down and worked, and yet nothing good came out, well that was not your fault. The muse was not with you that day. You are, of course, responsible for doing everything you can to win the fair muse over, but no more.
Your muse is the external part that assures you that there is some higher meaning to your work. She is necessary to a writer's development but she is not the only element you require. Having found your muse, it is time to look inside yourself at the three aspects of you that make up the writer: your Genius, Creative Youth and Critical Elder.
GENIUS
A lot of people use these concepts in different ways. Elizabeth Gilbert used the term in reference to a muse, while it can also be crossed-over with elements of what can be called the creative youth. However, for a fully coherent structure and set of creative relationships, it is best to separate them out.
Genius is completely your own, not like the muse. It is part of your subconscious that sits away in a room you cannot enter, playing its secret games. So just like your muse, the genius is not really under your control and can be a bit fickle.
You have to keep feeding your genius. It likes to work on problems, whittling away at them until something beautiful has been created. With your activities, you feed it little scraps. You cannot force it though. You cannot pull up the hatch and just grab at anything. You will offend your genius by doing so.
It may seem silly to have two such figures as a muse and a genius in your life, but honestly they can take a lot of the pressure off. Separate out the two from your conscious self, and you will never have to beat yourself up about your work ever again.
CREATIVE YOUTH AND CRITICAL ELDER
Dorothea Brande developed the terms Creative Youth and Critical Elder in her book On Becoming A Writer back in the 1930s. In pop-psychology terms, these are your left brain and your right brain at work. You can learn to control these dual natures of your conscious creative process. However, they are not at the level of the subconscious, and can be trained to be under your control.
If you want to be able to sit down, write on demand, and actually have a continuous stream of words come out, then you need to get to know these two. Your creative youth is like the 'inner child' people suggest getting in touch with. He doesn't care much for grammar and spelling, preferring to run and jump, sprint along and tell wild stories. If you train him properly, he will give you entire first drafts.
Beside his lack of grammar, the problem with youth is inconsistency. He's not consistent unless you train him to be. You can't just rely on him to make you a writer. If you wait for him, wait for 'feeling like writing', then you could be waiting a very long time, and in the end will have a thousand pieces of different stories.
That is where your critical elder comes in. The elder is wonderful in two, and only two, situations. They consist of controlling his little brother to get him to sit down and start, and then editing. He is a wonderful editor. The elder is the rational part of your mind that can be self-disciplined, loves structure and clarity and wants everything to be ordered.
The elder can, if you let him, become bossy and overriding, trying to correct the youth at he goes along, which, as you can imagine if you have elder brothers, causes the youth to not want to help at all. It will make your creative youth sit on a chair and talk. You must learn to make him step back, though. Make him not interrupt you until the end of the first draft.
It is easy to ask someone else to edit and proof-read your work, but getting the creative ideas down on paper in the first place is what makes you a writer. Therefore, you do not want to stop the flow from coming for any reason. Don't allow your elder to bully your youth so much that he sulks in the corner. If this happens, sharply rap your elder over the knuckles and set about coaxing your youth back with promises of adventure and freedom.
When the critical elder comes in the second draft, he is more than happy to sit down and go through each paragraph sentence by sentence, making sure it is all correct and in order. By now the creative youth has run off again, and might be called upon to answer a few questions about what he meant by this and that, but on the whole is not interested in rehashing old material.
Your genius will be throwing in ideas that you never even considered before, your muse will bless you and all will be right in your world. You will get the most out of your writing when you train the two to work together. Your work will become faster and freer.
Having someone else to blame is the most basic description of a muse. And most of the time, that is enough.
The author of Pray, Eat, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, gave an incredible TED talk on this subject, looking at what she referred to as 'the genius', the term taking from the Romans. However, muse is a Greek term which can be described as follows.
Muses in the ancient Greek were often portrayed as scantily clad women, inspiring through the arousal of sexual desire. But that wasn't their primary purpose. They were both the embodiment and the sponsors of the arts. If the muses chose to grant you the necessary skill and inspiration, you could produce great art.
The purpose of the muse was not to arouse inspiration within you, but rather to bestow inspiration and passion upon you. This is a very important distinction of roles. It was your responsibility to be open and willing to work when the inspiration was given, but it was her/his/its responsibility to give you that inspiration. If you sat down and worked, and yet nothing good came out, well that was not your fault. The muse was not with you that day. You are, of course, responsible for doing everything you can to win the fair muse over, but no more.
Your muse is the external part that assures you that there is some higher meaning to your work. She is necessary to a writer's development but she is not the only element you require. Having found your muse, it is time to look inside yourself at the three aspects of you that make up the writer: your Genius, Creative Youth and Critical Elder.
GENIUS
A lot of people use these concepts in different ways. Elizabeth Gilbert used the term in reference to a muse, while it can also be crossed-over with elements of what can be called the creative youth. However, for a fully coherent structure and set of creative relationships, it is best to separate them out.
Genius is completely your own, not like the muse. It is part of your subconscious that sits away in a room you cannot enter, playing its secret games. So just like your muse, the genius is not really under your control and can be a bit fickle.
You have to keep feeding your genius. It likes to work on problems, whittling away at them until something beautiful has been created. With your activities, you feed it little scraps. You cannot force it though. You cannot pull up the hatch and just grab at anything. You will offend your genius by doing so.
It may seem silly to have two such figures as a muse and a genius in your life, but honestly they can take a lot of the pressure off. Separate out the two from your conscious self, and you will never have to beat yourself up about your work ever again.
CREATIVE YOUTH AND CRITICAL ELDER
Dorothea Brande developed the terms Creative Youth and Critical Elder in her book On Becoming A Writer back in the 1930s. In pop-psychology terms, these are your left brain and your right brain at work. You can learn to control these dual natures of your conscious creative process. However, they are not at the level of the subconscious, and can be trained to be under your control.
If you want to be able to sit down, write on demand, and actually have a continuous stream of words come out, then you need to get to know these two. Your creative youth is like the 'inner child' people suggest getting in touch with. He doesn't care much for grammar and spelling, preferring to run and jump, sprint along and tell wild stories. If you train him properly, he will give you entire first drafts.
Beside his lack of grammar, the problem with youth is inconsistency. He's not consistent unless you train him to be. You can't just rely on him to make you a writer. If you wait for him, wait for 'feeling like writing', then you could be waiting a very long time, and in the end will have a thousand pieces of different stories.
That is where your critical elder comes in. The elder is wonderful in two, and only two, situations. They consist of controlling his little brother to get him to sit down and start, and then editing. He is a wonderful editor. The elder is the rational part of your mind that can be self-disciplined, loves structure and clarity and wants everything to be ordered.
The elder can, if you let him, become bossy and overriding, trying to correct the youth at he goes along, which, as you can imagine if you have elder brothers, causes the youth to not want to help at all. It will make your creative youth sit on a chair and talk. You must learn to make him step back, though. Make him not interrupt you until the end of the first draft.
It is easy to ask someone else to edit and proof-read your work, but getting the creative ideas down on paper in the first place is what makes you a writer. Therefore, you do not want to stop the flow from coming for any reason. Don't allow your elder to bully your youth so much that he sulks in the corner. If this happens, sharply rap your elder over the knuckles and set about coaxing your youth back with promises of adventure and freedom.
When the critical elder comes in the second draft, he is more than happy to sit down and go through each paragraph sentence by sentence, making sure it is all correct and in order. By now the creative youth has run off again, and might be called upon to answer a few questions about what he meant by this and that, but on the whole is not interested in rehashing old material.
Your genius will be throwing in ideas that you never even considered before, your muse will bless you and all will be right in your world. You will get the most out of your writing when you train the two to work together. Your work will become faster and freer.
About the Author:
More about overcoming your writing fears is discussed in another article. You can also find relevant information at Buffy Greentree's blog site.
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