Reuniting with my muse

December 10, 2009 | Category: Writing

innerwonderland

I have been battling a severe case of writer’s block for weeks now. I’ve been staring at blank screens waiting, then forcing inspiration to come out of me. But nothing comes out. I felt like I lost my muse and wondered where she had gone.

And now I’ve found her.

She’s been with me all this time, waiting for me to come to that inner wonderland where all my ideas and inspiration arise.

I was the one who was lost all along.

Getting lost

It all started weeks ago after one of the pieces I wrote got “severely edited.” At least for my standards, it was.

I was passionate about that piece and I thought I wrote it so well. When it came back to me all cut up and mixed with words and ideas that were not my own, I felt like my muse disappeared taking all the inspiration I had in me.

So when the next assignment came along, I couldn’t write. It was a relatively simple piece that needed very little inspiration to begin with, but whenever I tried to type something, I still ended up with a blank screen.

Truth: I was afraid to get cut up again.

First there was pride. I’ve fallen in love with my writing too much, I convinced myself that I was a perfect writer. And perfect writers don’t get edited like that.

Then came insecurity. Am I such a bad writer?

Desperate to write, I went looking for my muse, trying to grasp at sparks of inspiration when I could. But I couldn’t find her and the glints of inspiration faded too soon.

I forced myself to write methodically, looking at other people’s works and copying how they string their words. I did manage to finish a piece. But in the end, I knew it was missing “me.”

Finding my muse again

And then I surrendered.

There’s something amazing about surrendering. Because when you finally give up, that’s when things start to work out.

I surrendered my pride as well as my insecurity.

The moment I did, my vision began to clear. And I saw the signs leading me to the place where my muse was waiting.

I was going through my feed reader when I spotted this article about hooking your audience. It had links to blog posts by author Steven Pressfield which absolutely hooked him.

I clicked links and started reading Mr. Pressfield’s post “Write what you don’t know.” It may just as well have been titled “Write when you can’t” because it was his ideas that got me writing this post at past 4 in the morning.

Here are some of his insights that really hit me:

The part of us that we write from is far deeper than our everyday selves. In fact it has nothing whatsoever to do with our everyday selves. It comes from the Muse. It comes from the unconscious. It comes from some place we only tap into in dreams or intuition or inspiration.

It takes a little madness to write what you don’t know. It’s like leaping into the deep end. But it’s also tremendously liberating. I’m reading a wonderful book now called Improv Wisdom by Patricia Ryan Madson, who for years was one of the star teachers of drama at Stanford. Her thesis is “Don’t prepare, just show up.” In other words, trust in the mystery. Open your mouth and see what comes out. I’ve heard Jackson Browne say that he writes songs to find out what he thinks about something. In other words, he doesn’t know going in.

There’s stuff “down there” in all of us. It’s vast and deep and limitless. That’s the vein we need to mine as artists and as entrepreneurs. I’ve heard start-up businessmen say the two qualities they needed most in their initial ventures were arrogance and ignorance. You gotta be a little crazy (or desperate) to write or do what you don’t know. But there’s great wisdom and magic in that act. It demonstrates faith in the universe, in the Muse, in the source of all inspiration. And that faith, almost invariably, is rewarded by the cosmos and vindicated by events. I recommend it.

After reading that, I just know I won’t be able to sleep anyway if I don’t write this. So I did. And it feels so good.

I am so fired up again and the sparks have turned into flames of inspiration inside me. I have reunited with my Muse and I intend to be one with her from now on.

***
Are you feeling uninspired or stuck lately? Find your inner wonderland and reunite with your muse. She’s just there waiting for you.

Have you gotten over writer’s block? What did you do?

Photo: john

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