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?

Setting Aside Time for Your Muse by Sandra Ulbrich - Almazan

May is turning out to be guest-post month at Motivation for Creation.  This week I am happy to welcome Sandra Ulbrich-Almazan.  I met Sandra through the Great 100 Days Star Wars Blogathon.  She wrote a wonderful Star Wars haiku.  One day I visited her blog, Sandra Ulbrich-Almazan: Speculative Fiction Author to beg for points, and decided to just request a guest post instead.  Sandra graciously agreed, and now you get to read her thoughts on writing and the muse.

Setting Aside Time for Your Muse

As writers, we often feel the only way to measure our productivity is by how many words we get down on the page every day. The Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard approach is helpful if you’ve already planned out what you’re going to say. Sometimes forcing yourself to write something, anything when you’re not sure what to put down can help you get back on track. But then what happens during the revision process, when you have to rip out all of those words? Sure, removing unnecessary words and scenes will improve the story, but at the same time it can make you feel like you’re going backwards instead of forwards.

Furthermore, the time spent typing words is only part of the story-generating process. You need some time to get to know your character, the events of the story, and (depending on your genre), maybe even creating the setting. Sometimes this can be done in idle moments when you’re daydreaming while performing some mindless task. However, given the way technology makes us more accessible and allows us more access to others, idle moments can be hard to find. This is especially true if you have a day job and/or others to take care of. How do you find time to do your pre-writing then?

The answer is clear: you need to set aside time for your pre-writing, just as you have to set aside time for the actual writing. Sometimes that can mean instead of having a regular writing session, you have a brainstorming or outlining session.

I’m a panster. Usually I know the beginning, ending, and a few key middle points when I start a story, but the rest tends to be spontaneous. However, I’ve tried outlining drafts after I’ve written them, and that helps me identify scenes that are too similar to others I’ve written or ones that go nowhere. I’ve also sat down and wrote out all the worldbuilding or character details that I normally keep in my head. I’ve found even though I may have been writing about a particular world or character for years, formally writing things down will uncover aspects that I haven’t explored. The process generates questions and ideas I can later bring back to the work.

Does this mean I’m changing from a panster to a plotter? I have tried outlining before writing for a NaNoWriMo project. It helped for a while, but when I veered away from the outline, the novel stalled. (I have made some slight progress since then, but other projects are currently a priority.) I’ll have to try it again to see if this method will work consistently for me. I think instead what I’m doing is finding another way to accomplish my pre-writing. What I would like to do is set aside one or two blocks of time each week to focus on pre-writing instead of writing. It may sound odd to schedule inspiration and imagination, but the muse is more likely to show up if you’re ready—or at the least not distracted by your child, your job, or your never-ending To Do list. And if scheduling pre-writing can help me get to a final draft sooner, then it’s worth doing.

About the Author

Sandra Ulbrich Almazan started reading at the age of three and only stops when absolutely required to. Although she hasn’t been writing quite that long, she did compose a very simple play in German during middle school. Her science fiction novella Move Over Ms. L. (an early version of Lyon’s Legacy) earned an Honorable Mention in the 2001 UPC Science Fiction Awards, and her short story “A Reptile at the Reunion” was published in the anthology Firestorm of Dragons. She is a founding member of BroadUniverse and a long-time member of the Online Writing Workshop for Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror. Her undergraduate degree is in molecular biology/English, and she has a Master of Technical and Scientific Communication degree. Her current day job is in the laboratory of an enzyme company; she’s also been a technical writer and a part-time copyeditor for a local newspaper. Some of her other accomplishments are losing on Jeopardy! and taking a stuffed orca to three continents. She lives in the Chicago area with her husband, Eugene; and son, Alex. In her rare moments of free time, she enjoys crocheting, listening to classic rock (particularly the Beatles), and watching improv comedy.

Sandra can be found online at her website, blog, Twitter, and Facebook. Upcoming projects from Sandra include a standalone fantasy story called “The Fighting Roses of Sharon”; Twinned Universes, the second book in the science fiction Catalyst Chronicles series; and Scattered Seasons, the first book in the fantasy Season Lords series. 

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.” 

Trust the Process

To be truthful, I stole the title of this post from John Taylor, bass player of Duran Duran.  In his case, the title referenced the process of living a happy life, both clean and sober.  For me, the words jump to mind as I trip over rejections, uncertainty, frustration, apathy, and any number of obstacle illusions that appear in the path of this journey of becoming a successfully published author. 

Dr. Joyce Brothers said “Trust your hunches.  They’re usually based on facts filed away, just below the conscious level.”  For those who claim “Pantser” title (of writing by the seat of their pants, instead of outlining or putting much thought into direction), I imagine the trusting of hunches is quite a simple task.  I, unfortunately, cannot claim “pantser-ship.”  I am firmly bound by rules and like the structure of a simple outline.  I don’t know how much of an anomaly I am, but I have come to embrace the fact that I am what I am.  For me, structure provides stable soil in which my creative impulses grow to fruition.  That being said, I have had to learn to allow my hunches to fully expand.  I have to remind myself to trust the process of writing, of exploring and delving into the fertile ground of my subconscious outside of the outlined fences I erect around my work in progress.  It makes me uneasy at times.  I want assurances that I am writing the best story, that I’m doing it right.  It’s hard to step back and trust in intuition, but it gets easier with practice, and there is no more joyful surprise than when the muse speaks, pulling from my subconscious the absolutely most perfect ending, or story twist, or character so that I am shocked I didn’t think of it before.

I also have to remind myself to trust the process of becoming a writer.  When I compare my journey to that of other writer’s, I sometimes become frustrated.  I am acutely aware of the clock ticking and the years passing.  I have met most of my self-imposed goal posts, but still become afraid that the cost may end up outweighing the benefit.  Placing my trust in an unknown outcome is an extremely hard thing to do.  Trusting the process of becoming a writer means my journey is the best journey for me.  I do not need to compare myself with other writer’s, instead I can be happy for their successes.  I can take my time learning what I need to learn, because the next lesson will arrive when I am ready for it.  The process of becoming then becomes the goal.  And, as long as you continue to write and learn, you can’t fail at becoming.