The muse

Along with writing rituals, which I went into last week, the muse is a popular notion among artists of all stripes. Born from the Greek goddesses who inspired artists, the idea has grown to include particular people who are said to have inspired great works of art. However, the meaning of the word that I’m most interested in conveys the idea that some external, nonhuman force compels the artist’s work.

As you may have gathered if you’ve read this blog before, I’m a pragmatist, even when it comes to my art. A lot of people think art and pragmatism can’t possibly mix, but I see pragmatism as a tool that I can use in the service of what I create. When I encounter an idea that isn’t provably true or false, such as the writing ritual, I ask, “Can this help my writing, and if so, how?” And also like the writing ritual, the muse—particularly the belief in it—can help or hinder an artist’s work.

Of course, the muse is a nonfalsifiable idea. No one can prove it does or does not exist, nor, I suspect, do most people who talk about it think there’s a literal spirit wafting around waiting to bestow creative gifts on whomever it blows past. It’s more likely that a writer will talk about the muse as a heuristic explaining how they experience the process of creativity—if they feel the muse describes their process at all. Personally, I’m more likely to be visited by an obsessive workhorse that wants to be harnessed to the WIP and pull until it collapses.

But many artists have found this idea of the muse helps them in their work. Experiencing yourself as an instrument of a much wiser, more creative force than you are can give you the confidence to sit down and write without criticizing yourself. If something is from the muse, it’s inspired; it’s beyond petty criticism. It also gives you a sense of connection with other artists and can ease the loneliness that can come from spending your days in front of a screen—with or without breaks to check Facebook. And plenty of artists have credited the muse with their productions, leading aspiring artists to hope that they, too, will be able to harness this inspirational force in their own work.

But what if the muse hasn’t visited you? (You knew I was going to come down on the anti-muse side, didn’t you?) What if you can’t prove that the muse dropped by yesterday afternoon while you were slaving away? I’ve heard plenty of writers tie themselves in verbal knots—we’re good at verbal anything, and we’re GREAT at making problems for ourselves—trying to figure out if the muse has inspired their work or if they’ve just convinced themselves it’s good when really it’s terrible. The “Am I talented?” discussion works similarly: writers worry about whether they are “really” talented without establishing any definition of talent that would help them determine such a thing, and then, when they’re supposed to be writing, they instead worry about whether they have what it takes—talent, the muse, what have you—to complete their project well. Moreover, once you buy into the idea that you must feel a certain way before you sit down to write and that anything other than that certain “inspired” feeling is terrible news, you can really psych yourself out, keep yourself from developing your writing skills, and miss deadlines for your work.

This is why, personally, I don’t find the idea of the muse helpful. I like knowing that, even if I don’t feel like writing, I can write anyway. Usually on such occasions I feel better almost immediately because I’ve trained myself to sit down at the page regardless of how I feel; my decision to write is up to me and not up to an impersonal force that may or may not be present and may or may not even be real. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the muse shows up to the page. It matters that I do.