A Good Muse Is Hard to Find
An essay by Rickey Pittman, Bard of the South
The Ancient Greeks believed there were nine muses—not counting the legendary Sappho, known as the Tenth Muse. The Greeks considered the muses to be the source of inspiration and knowledge for the arts, science, and literature. There is much written about the muses in Greek and Roman mythology, literature, and plays. There were statues and paintings of the muses in ancient history and throughout our own nation. In New Orleans, a city that has inspired so many writers, there are streets named after the nine muses. Understanding the work of the muses is especially relevant to writers, especially in the areas of poetry, dance, music, visual arts, and literature. Indeed, it has been said that we writers are children of the muses. It is important to understand why writers may need a muse, what muses do, how they do their work, and how writers can search for one.
Yes, a good muse is often needed by writers when they suffer from writer’s block, when they realize they have lost their creativity, and when motivation vanishes. Writer’s block is said to be simply a lack of inspiration that the muses supply or fuel.
Writer’s block happens when writers are stuck in a rut, when they struggle to come up with fresh ideas, and when they are overwhelmed by fear of failure and rejection. It’s like when William says in Shakespeare in Love, “It’s as if my quill is broken.” Losing one’s creativity can be very discouraging to a writer and results in a loss of energy and effort. Austin Kleon, whose books focus on creativity in our crazy world, says, “Inertia is the death of creativity.” Inertia is the tendency to do nothing and allow one’s work to remain unchanged. When writers lose their motivation, inertia sets in, and they have lost their reasons to write. Writers without motivation won’t push themselves to follow a rigid writing schedule, to make necessary sacrifices, or, because of self-doubt, even believe in themselves. One good encounter with a muse can set off ideas and plans for stories, poems, songs, novels, and nonfiction books.
Writers are such complicated individuals that the mystical work of a muse must be difficult and, out of necessity, multifaceted. For writers, a muse can be the source of a genius idea or a well-turned phrase. Or perhaps a muse can provide the spark for avoir l’esprit de l’escalier, the staircase wit that comes to us when we cannot think of a witty sentence or comeback until it’s too late to use it. That is the moment when a writer says, “I wish I had thought to say this before I left.” However, if those comebacks are remembered or written down, they can easily be included in future writing. A muse can be a person, perhaps someone who has captured a writer’s heart or is a source of inspiration. For example, in Shakespeare in Love, William says, “Henslow, you have no soul, so how can you understand the emptiness that seeks a soul mate?” As the movie progresses, it is clear that the women who have his heart are the inspiration for his writing. His soul mate is his muse. Like William, writers often feel empty without a muse, someone to serve as their inspiration.
Many great writers have had special women muses who became their soul mates. Dante’s muse for the writing of the Divine Comedy was Beatrice, his childhood sweetheart, a real case of love at first sight. The muse for John Keats was Fanny Brawne, idolized in his poetry, especially in “When I Have Fears That I Might Cease to Be.” The muse for the French poet Charles Baudelaire was Jeanne Duval. For the writer of the Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the love of his life was Zelda Sayre. Ain’t love grand?
When does a muse’s work begin? Roger Ebert says, “The Muse visits during the process of creation, not before.” His point is that muses like to find busy writers. So, the best way for a writer to find a muse is to get to work and start brainstorming, creating word banks, or exploring or editing previous written ideas. In a darker tone, Stephen King says, “Muses are ghosts, and sometimes they come uninvited.” A muse may ambush a writer on a walk, during church, or when daydreaming. Anyone who reads King’s novels, can easily see how these ghostly ideas can affect a writer’s writing. And true, sometimes the ideas, thoughts or words the muses send can be startling or a bit frightening. King’s quote made me think of how the Holy Ghost (the Holy Spirit) acted as muse and guided the Biblical authors in creating our God-breathed scriptures. Imagine how terrifying that thought could be to them as they worked, when they felt and realized the importance of their sacred muse.
Writers should face the fact that muses can also be temperamental. A writer can’t call a muse and tell her when or how to come. Sometimes a muse comes to a writer in impressions or whispers, and the writer can’t tell her to come back later because she may not return. How many times have we writers been given an idea, a thought, or a phrase only to see it vanish when we let it go?
How can a muse help a writer? What kind of work do they do? Muses can work by giving writers a sudden idea or an insight into how to solve or spot a problem or create a world. A muse can come to writers with ideas when they listen to the lyrics of a song, during a visit to a museum, by an eaves-dropped conversation, or even through a dream. For example, John Dudresne in his fine book on writing fiction, The Lie that Tells a Truth, writes about how writers can be granted ideas in the hypnopompic state, when one is half-awake, half-asleep in the morning and then again in the hypnogogic state in those last “minutes in bed as you begin to fall asleep.” Dufresnes says it is possible that “your hypnagogic images may continue in your dreams.” It is certain that many writers have been given ideas and images at those times, and it is reasonable to conclude that these idea gifts are from the unseen muses.
So, how does a writer search for a muse? Well, a muse doesn’t have to be someone or something from the present, it can be discovered in a book, a painting, or a scene in nature. A writer’s muse can be a fictional character, a historical character from the past, (Think of how children often act out or play as if they are heroes of past), or from reading a biography or autobiography of a famous novel writer, poet, or artist. Reading the biographies of notable writers, will not only reveal how they found their muses, how they built their careers, but will lead the searching writer to discover secret muses of their own they have never thought of before.
Sometimes, a muse is met through serendipity. In other words, sometimes the writer doesn’t find a muse, the muse finds the writer. A writer can meet a muse unexpectedly at an author book signing, a conference, a lecture, or just by plain luck. Sometimes the hard work that authors do will sometimes pay off by meeting someone during their trips, or even better, the writer’s muse will lead them to opportunities.
Desperation may stimulate and drive writers to search for a muse in unusual and not always successful ways, because a muse cannot be forced to appear, and what a writer thinks may be a muse may just be trouble and not a muse at all. Consider the example of the screenwriter in the hilarious movie, The Muse, starring Albert Brooks and Sharon Stone. Brooks hires the very expensive Stone as a muse when he thinks (and is told) his screenwriter career is over. Those in charge say he has lost his edge. Stone indeed brings him some success and raises his confidence, but the results are not what he hoped. Indeed, true to life, a muse can surprise a writer! Sometimes it seems a muse may have an ironic sense of humor.
For a writer, finding one’s muse can be a long process. Sometimes the muse one had before will flee from a writer, requiring her to be replaced. Hopefully, the muse can be replaced by another. And know that sometimes, you find the muse, and sometimes, the muse finds you. Whatever happens, it is true, as Guy Clark says, “A good muse is hard to find.”
