Oh Muse, Where Art Thou?

Today I decided to post one of my more popular posts from the Life List Club.  How we come to have that flash of inspiration amazes me.  The human brain is unbelievably complex and fascinating.  This post came from curiosity about how cognitive the Muse may actually be.

Oh Muse, Where Art Thou?

Photo by Nicole N at Flickr

Inspiration.

Imagination.

Creativity.

All three are words attributed to the occasionally elusive creature called the Muse.

While us artist-types rely on the Muse to inspire our current artistic endeavors, we aren’t the only people with muses.  Everyone has creativity, and needs creativity to solve problems.

Through the creative process, we move through the mundane to come up with unique and original ideas.  We use this process every day, from when we determine an alternate route when our traditional route to work is blocked, to deciding what to have for dinner.

How creative we are is influenced by our intelligence, memory, personality, attitude, mental health, and physical health, among others.  While some of these factors are beyond our control, many of them aren’t.  By altering those over which we have control, we can sharpen and develop our creativity.  We can grow our muses.

EXERCISE

Exercise is one of the fastest ways to influence creativity, for several reasons.  First, exercise decreases the effects of stress by releasing endorphins which positively affect our mental health.  Positive mental health leads to a positive attitude.  A positive attitude leads to increased mental flexibility, which makes it easier to be creative.

Exercise improves every aspect of cognition, including creativity.  There is something about activating the right side of the brain that enhances creativity, and instead of trying to explain it, I’m giving you the link to a fascinating article about it here.

WORK ON YOUR WORKING MEMORY

Working memory is also called short-term memory.  It is the part of our brain that stores information for short periods of time so that we can manipulate the information to understand and reason what we saw, learned, etc…  Exercising your brain, whether through brain games, chess, word puzzles, etc… you can increase your working memory.

BECOME A BRAINSTORMING GENIUS

In the article “How to Get Mindpopping Ideas,”  Michael Michalko likens creativity to the universe, and creative ideas to the subatomic particles found throughout.   He gives three ways to harvest all those millions of ideas and thoughts while brainstorming.

Photo from Freedigitialphoto.net

Observe and record each thought as a possibility.  The key word here is observe.  Don’t place judgment or value to anything your subconscious brain puts forth.  When we judge the value of our thoughts, we snuff out creativity.

Become inclusive.  When brainstorming, accept every thought as important and potentially valuable, no matter how crazy or random it seems. Creativity is the combining of elements in new and unusual ways.

Keep a written record.  Writing down our thoughts and ideas moves them into long-term memory.  Even if we aren’t consciously thinking of the idea, our subconscious is, and will create more and more ideas.

What are some ways you increase communication with your muse?

Three Magical Quotes Supporting Writing Regularly (whether you feel like it or not)

Over the last year, I have mentioned in my blog posts, on forums and to pretty much anyone who would listen how writing daily has been one of the best bits of advice I received when I first started writing.  While I was researching this post last night, I read a post-repeat from James Scott Bell about the Ten Commandments for Writers (read it here) where he stressed again coming up with weekly word count goals.  Whether it be writing daily for ten minutes or creating weekly word count goals, regular writing is key to improving your writing skills and exercising your imagination muscles.

Quote 1.  "Whatever you think you can do, or believe you can do, begin it.  Action has magic, grace and power in it."   Johann Wolfgang

By sitting down daily and creating, a door is opened which allows the magic, grace and power of the imagination (or what some call the muse) out for a little exercise.  Each time the door is opened, our muses venture a little further into the creative realm.  Instead of having to wait for Inspiration to smack us upside the head, our muses bring Inspiration to us.  But first we have to act, we have to open the door.

Free Digital Photos

Quote 2.  "Love and magic have a great deal in common.  They enrich the soul, delight the heart.  And they both take practice."  Unknown

I am a firm believer in practice making things better, if not perfect.  Two of the toughest things I am trying to teach myself in my life are how to love well and fully, and how to write engaging stories that bring magic to my audience.  I don’t think it is possible to ever reach the pinnacle of either pursuit.  The joy is truly in the journey.  In the case of writing, continuing the trip each day allows progression down the road.  With regular practice, we will find success much sooner than if we sit on the couch and wait until we feel called to write.

Quote 3.  "And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.  Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it."  Roald Dahl

Have you ever written something, felt it was totally uninspired and dull, and then when you re-read it the next day or the next week, you were able to take the sentences, polish them up, and they turned out to be crucial to your story's next steps?  That happened to me this week.  I was feeling terribly dried up last week when I hand wrote about three pages of my novel in a notebook.  I was totally convinced it was crap, and I was dumb to think I would ever write something other people would want to read. 

At the beginning of the week, I pulled out the pages and grimly started typing them into the computer.  (Because, dammit, I’m going to finish a novel!)  As I typed along, I added some things, took out others, and suddenly I was kind of digging where the story was going.  A cool idea how I might incorporate a dragon arose from the unlikely place of those dried-up, uninspired words.  Charles de Lint says it perfectly.  “That’s the thing with magic.  You’ve got to know it’s still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible to you.” 

Review of Steven Pressfield's The War of Art by Guest Blogger, Kaelin P. Hornsby

It is my great pleasure to introduce the first guest blogger on Motivation for Creation, Kaelin P. Hornsby.  Kaelin is a freelance writer and aspiring sci-fi novelist, who hails from the Pacific Northwest.  After conquering traditional college, she devised her own continuing-ed program, including the occasional academic writing conference such as the Writing the Rockies Conference, where I had the great fortune to meet her.  She’s currently working on a time-travel novella, Antiquity, which you can find at her blog: www.kapehorn.com.  Welcome, Kaelin!

A friend recommended Steven Pressfield’s  The War of Art to me and, despite the depth and breadth of my ‘to read’ pile, I managed to get to it before summer was out.  Much to the book’s credit, its 165 page length had something to do with it getting ushered to the top of the list.  Pressfield, known chiefly for his military/historical fiction and for his non-fiction novel-turned-film, The Legend of Bagger Vance, produced this 2002 work with an eye toward inspiring anyone struggling with creative endeavors.  Where others might offer advice in the guise of catchy notions like making lists, organizing the desk, or maximizing production with the help of a day planner, Pressfield instead examines why on Earth we’d be having problems in the first place.

Resistance, he espouses, is the real problem.  The book’s three sections, indeed, make this clear – Resistance, Combating Resistance, and Beyond Resistance.  He casts resistance in the role of a literal villain which asserts itself as distraction, laziness, fear, doubt or anything else that stands between the creator and what he or she wishes to create.  The book demands that the reader confront: “why am I not making my dream a priority?” and goes on to explore potential whys and how to deal with them.  Among the usual suspects (guilt, uncertainty, lack of confidence), Pressfield offers the best perspective I have ever encountered on the oft-mocked notion of “fear of success.”  Sure, it sounds insane, why would anyone fear success?  Pressfield offers the insightful deduction that, as creatures with a long history of tribal-based survival, we’re often reluctant to do something that would set us apart from our community. 

Venturing into the spritual/mystical aspect of creativity, Pressfield stresses the importance of acknowledging the inspiration behind artistic effort.  Whether a writer/painter/musician believes in a god or the power of the universe or in having a personal muse, Pressfield feels it is vital to recognize that influence, and to respect it.  Certainly, there are plenty of authors who describe writing not as a process of ‘making up’ a story, but of discovering it – and it is this idea that Pressfield builds upon.  It frees the artist, to some degree, to believe that showing up and doing the work is the real key, and in trusting the rest to inspiration.

While it may or may not solve every artist’s problem with procrastination, it is one of the most thought-provoking works I have found on creativity.  If reading it hasn’t stopped me from getting distracted while writing, it has made me more aware of my distraction, more conscious of just how much time I’m wasting.  And knowing, as they say, is half the battle.

For First-Timers

I have been having a wonderful time vacationing and relaxing, both very important to mental health and creativity.  Trying to be creative while stressed out can be an source of frustration, rather than a joy.  The sense of the little fingers of imaginative thought shrinking into your brain, instead of flowing outward, only adds to the stress.  A little down time may be just the thing to get those creative juices running.


In my case, I've thoroughly enjoyed spending time with my family and friends.  I can't say that I gained any new perspective on my first novel, though.  To that end, I found a lovely quote by Anthony Doerr, who said "I found my first novel difficult.  I don't want to make it sound like it's any more difficult than driving a cab or going to any other job, but there are so many opportunities for self-doubt, that you just kind of need to soldier on."


Thinking too much can put a halt on the creative process.  Get too far into the analytical side of your brain, and nothing is good enough anymore.  In those cases, it's probably best to go with the Nike logo and "Just Do It" and soldier on, knowing you're in good company.