A Letter to My Errant Muse

Dear Fred,

You and I have always had an uneasy alliance. I pooh-pooh the whole idea of a “Muse” as something akin to the myth of “writer’s block,” and say “I don’t need a Muse, for crying out loud.” You snicker and fling me a link to that scene in “The Sound of Music” where Liesl swears she doesn’t need a governess and ask if I’d prefer to have one, rather than a Muse.

We wrestle over wording. I revert to the prosaic prose of the technical writer; you stab me with a knife dipped in lemon juice and suggest that I dip my fountain pen in the blood and carve the words on bone. I get lost in the thesaurus or dive down the rabbit hole of Google; you slam the book on my nose and tell me to stop dawdling. We make a good team — I’ll grudgingly admit that much.

You’re a bit lazy in the inspiration department. Perched, there, on the arm of the chair, you mutter something about going out, having experiences, finding my own inspiration. “Write what you know,” you hiss. “Well, whaddayaknow? You never take me nice places…” Bitch, whine — what good is a Muse who has to be constantly entertained? If I go out and fill the well from which I draw my own inspiration, why should I keep you around? Just to feed your popcorn addiction? You eat my chocolate and throw me razzberries. When I suggest that providing inspiration is your job, you recite poetry, for God’s sake. Your favorite seems to be John Berryman’s “Dream Song 14,” and I think that’s just a snarky taunt. Thanks for nothing. I thought you were supposed to be one of my “inner resources.”

Granted, we’ve had some fine adventures, bonding over our shared hatred of the Inner Critic, Edna. She’s still blue in the face (and everywhere else) after being chucked out of an airplane lavatory at 35,000 feet. I suppose I should work a bit more on our story, come November. I’ll bring the sharpened fountain pen, you bring the rum — deal?

Or maybe we should work on the djinni/pirate witch story (speaking of rum), since your predecessor, Prunebutt, has done his disappearing act, again. What is it with me and insufferably snarky, uncooperative Muses? We have a lot of unfinished business, come to think of it, and now I’m starting to think we need some family counseling, to boot.

I sometimes wish I’d been blessed with a Muse that kept me up all night with a million ideas and didn’t share my love of dark chocolate and sleep, or @Prunebutt1, rolling out from under the couch to bite me in the foot — that we deserve. I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve you (both) but we’re used to one another, now, so I suppose we’ve got no choice but to make the best of it.

Let’s have some new adventures soon, H.

P.S. My grandmother used to say, “You’ve got to write letters to get letters.” Ball’s in your court, Muse.