The Muse Isn’t Who You Think She Is

You’re already ready. That’s my battle cry and my deepest truth. There’s nothing you aren’t ready to make, to learn, to do, or to become. 

But you may have already noticed that doesn’t make it easy. 

Just being ready to do the Big Scary Thing you want to do isn’t a cure-all. Simply being ready doesn’t make you leap up in the morning to work hard to chase your dream. 

And that sucks! I know. 

Often, artists (like you, like me) wait for the inspiration to follow their dreams. They wait for the Muse to take them by the hand and lead them to the magic. They wait for the moment that conditions are just perfect for making their art. Or they believe that they just have to find the exact right process that works for them, the process that will finally allow them to work more regularly on their art. 

And they think that if they just do the work more often, it’ll get easier to do it. 

But—sadly—doing the work of our heart never becomes easy. Ever. 

One of the biggest joys of my life is working with new writers who want to write or revise their books. Most of them enter my ninety-day classes expecting to find out that once they’re on track and working regularly, things will smooth out. The thing they’ve been missing, they think, is commitment to the project. I can help with that—they get external accountability, which is incredibly helpful, yes. They make a concrete plan of action (which is changeable, just like life), and yes, that’s also awesome. 

But then, a few weeks in, they all start to realize something at the same time: Oh, damn, this is still really hard!

Dude, that’s a real downer of a realization. 

Making the commitment and showing up to do the work—isn’t that enough? Shouldn’t they be rewarded with pleasure and ease? 

I understand the pain they feel of crashing into this question because I’m a forgetter. I forget the things I’ve learned over and over, and I ask when my art is going to get easier all the time. 

The more books I write, the more I expect the Muse to show up. I like to believe that someday she’ll wake me with a gentle kiss on my cheek. Then she’ll make me a perfect cup of coffee and guide me to the desk, where she’ll not only open my document, but also inspire me to write sentences and paragraphs and scenes and chapters and whole books quickly and easily because she’s chosen me. I have committed to the process, and therefore, I will finally be the Muse’s teacher’s pet.

Hell, no. It just doesn’t work that way. 

You already know that, don’t you? You can feel that in your bones. You’ve been waiting for the heat of the Divine Muse, but you’re really pretty chilly most of the time. 

The Muse is often ascribed fire-like properties. She burns. Shakespeare said, “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend/The brightest heaven of invention.” When caught in her arms, you’ll burn, too, all the passion in your body and heart bursting into a creative blaze. 

And okay, a small part of this is true. The Muse does require warmth. She hates the cold, and she’ll definitely go on strike if the temperature drops below sixty-five. 

So that makes you, the artist, like Laura Ingalls Wilder when she woke to find that “ice crackled on the quilt where leaking rain had fallen” in The Long Winter. Every single damn day, you wake up under the covers, clutching the little warmth that’s left. Shivering helps a bit as it rapidly contracts your skeletal muscles, generating just enough heat to stay alive. 

But you have to relight the fire, and no amount of shivering will do it. Praying for the Muse to come in with a blowtorch might be a fun wish but she doesn’t work that way. 

So every day that you’ve scheduled to work on the thing that holds your heart, whatever that is, you have to pry yourself out of the covers and throw on every sweater and jacket you own while you screech like someone’s just thrown you into a Norwegian fjord. 

Then, you bolt for the wood-fired stove. You pray there’s still a tiny spark left under the log from last night that’ll help the newspaper catch faster, but if it’s been more than a day since you worked on your project, the stove is as cold as your fingertips, and you’ve got to work to get that sumbitch warm.  

So you shove in the paper, spitting curses that would make Gordon Ramsey blush. A little kindling next, but you move too fast, and a splinter shoves its way into your palm so far that you feel it pierce your spleen. Then you reach to add a nice, small piece of dry wood, except, goddammit, it’s been raining, and you forgot to bring any small pieces in yesterday to dry so you’re going to have to use even more kindling to catch a bigger, drier log, and meanwhile, your frigid bones sound like a pair of maracas being shaken by a giant. 

Slowly—oh, so slowly—the first log starts to catch. 

Even more slowly, the heat stops going up the flue and starts pushing out into the room, into you. First your face warms, probably more from exertion, but you’ll take it. Then your teeth stop clacking. You’re able to stand and turn your backside to the growing warmth. 

Then, finally, you’re warm. You can move again. You can do the work you wanted to do. Your hands are warm enough to hold the paintbrush, or your fingers can hold the pen you’re using to write your poem. 

In fact—and here’s the magic of this—as you do your work, you just keep getting warmer. 

While you’re working, ideas start to flow as easy as tossing another log on the fire to keep the heat going. You realize your book needs a dragon—why hadn’t you seen that before? It’s so obvious! You’ve been struggling to figure out how to up the stakes and to show how foes become friends—this is genius. 

You turn to thank the Muse who’s just given you this incredible idea, but you can’t see her. 

Huh. 

Weird. 

Kind of like you can’t see your own face when you turn around. 

Hi, guess what—YOU ARE THE MUSE. 

The Muse as an outside force that comes to help spark your inspiration doesn’t exist. 

We think we have to wait for the right mood to do our creative work. We think we have to wait for inspiration to strike before we pour our hearts into what we love. And sure, that sometimes works. For me, it averages out to about two days a year. Twice a year, I launch myself at my desk with joy, just because I feel like it. All the other days? Inspiration and joy wells up only when I’m actually doing the generation of the heat myself. 

Madeline L’Engle said, “Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.” She knew that she was the Muse, and that showed in her books—her characters always found the answers inside themselves (because that’s where answers always live). 

You have to work your way to inspiration, not the other way around. 

And work it is. Would I rather lie in bed every morning than getting up and relighting the fire? Hell, yes. From bed, I can reach for my phone and tumble into the heffalump trap that is the constant cycle of refreshing email, then Twitter, then Instagram, and then back around again. Our brains—used to getting pings on our phones or our computers every few minutes—crave that dopamine hit that comes with novelty. Each time you refresh an app, there’s a deep down hope that this time will be the time that satisfies the urge. You already know that never happens but you do it anyway. (Don’t feel bad! You’re not at fault for falling into a trap that was set precisely for you. You’re human. The first step to getting out of the trap is realizing you’ve been caught.)

Okay. You’ve set the phone down. You’re wishing like hell to find the inspiration to write one more scene, or work on the dance move that’s been literally tripping you up for weeks. But you, the Muse, are shivering. 

In order to warm up, in order to feel creative, you have to do something creative. 

Honestly, watching my students realize that writing their books will never feel easy but that they can light their own Muse’s fire is something that never gets old for me to witness. 

It’s not going to get easier, is it? 

No, I say. 

But every time I do write, I find inspiration. From the work itself. 

Yes, I say. 

Even on the hardest days, doing the work feels better than not doing the work. 

Exactly, I say. 

And it’s really not going to get easier? 

It doesn’t get easier, I say. But it keeps getting better. 

So: light the fire. Yes, it’s hard, but the more fuel you give it, the brighter it will blaze. As you work, the inspiration will come, in a slow trickle at first but the more you go back to it, the hotter it grows. 

You are the Muse. And how I love to see you burn.