A Muse Yourself

I have taken to reading one essay every day from Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing.  One of his essays, "How to Keep and Feed a Muse" is something that I haven't necessarily thought much about in a long while.  Of course, I often think of being creative, finding inspiration.  How silly of me to forget that who brings it, is what we have come to call a Muse.  It is our bringer of ideas, stories, masterpieces, in any creative facet that can be had.  It can be a he or she or even an it, if it so needs to be.

The mythology of the muse (which were actually nine muses, goddesses who inspire artists, writers, poets and so forth) is always interesting to learn about though I won't elaborate on that in here.  If you wish, you can find out more about the origin of the muse here.

As a writer, it is important to wonder and discover what a muse is to you.  Within his essay, Bradbury speaks of his own muse, and how he perceives it:

The muse...is there, a fantastic storehouse, our complete being.  All that is most original lies waiting for us to summon it forth.  And yet we know it is not as easy as that...

I am not one thing.  I am many things that America has been in my time.  I have had enough sense to keep moving, learning, growing.  And I have never reviled or turned my back on the things I grew out of...  I am such a creature as can remember with love not only Michelangelo's Vatican ceilings but the long gone sounds of the radio show, "Vic and Sade."

To Bradbury, everything that he has done in his life has become his muse.  So long as he sought it with enjoyment, love, and an undying thirst to discover, it has been his muse.  And to feed it is to keep living his life in this way.

For myself, I have discovered some of the things that are conducive to finding and feeding my own muse.  I listen to music, all kinds of music.  I love music.  I played violin in grade school until I graduated from high school and I still have much of my old sheet music, though my violin needs some TLC after all this time.  I love classical, jazz, pop, rock, new age, easy listening, cultural, the list keeps going.  That is why I love it.  There are as many types of music as there are colors in the world.  Do you ever need to tap into a specific emotion?  Choose a song or a variety of songs, and you will be able to access that emotion. 

But it isn't just music.  It is within the books I read, the movies I watch, the anime my husband insists that I see.  I was a classic geek through most of school, loving science, especially meteorology, biology, and astronomy.  I wanted to be an astronaut for NASA.  I love to learn about things; how they work, where you find them, why they are important, and where to go from there.  Everything is open to me and I love to discover it. 

I have found that my muse is all around me, and though at times I may be short on its gifts of inspiration, I know that it can come immediately out of the strangest places.  So I find something fun to do, a past time, like a hobby and I indulge myself in it.  Do you want to make a birdhouse, how about a clay sculpture?  I love photography and ceramic painting, and I love to go canoeing and rock climbing.  The importance for me is to leave the door unlocked, perhaps even cracked, with a plate of warm cookies to lure the muse in if I must.

Sometimes, I seem to get a little too worried about creating an inspirational and motivating space for myself, in writing.  I find that I tend to push too hard in finding that muse, who is as sly as they are enlightening.  I do things specifically to find and capture that muse, but if I try to do so that way, it will easily escape. 

However, if I open myself to its possibilities and give them the time they need to bring forth their gifts, I feel the muse will ease shyly into the room.  And hopefully, my cookies or my photography will keep them around long enough to take down their inspiration. 

Where does your muse come from?  How do you invite it in?  And if you are having trouble, please visit my page of helpful Links.  There are links that help me to invite my muse.