MAY WRITING EXPERIENCE — WEEK ONE

The Writing Muse — Do We All Have One?

May Writing Experience, Introducing WEEK ONE (MAY 1–7) Materials / Tasks

Welcome to week one of the May Writing Experience, a collaborative writing challenge by Fiddleheads & Floss Poetry and Sky Collection. This is week 1 / Introduction to the topic and the Medium challenge(s) for the week.

The Writing Muse

You’ve likely heard other writer friends talking about their muse. I’ll admit, when I first began writing more prolifically and meeting other writers, I was a bit jealous. I wasn’t sure I had one of those fancy-schmancy muses. I wanted one too!

I’ve since learned, the concept of a muse differs from writer to writer, painter to painter, creator to creator. So what is it exactly? How do you know if you have one? Well, today, we’re going to open our minds a bit and do a deep dive on this topic and what it means to you as a creative and as a writer, specifically.

What Exactly Is a Writing Muse?

The writer’s muse is something we’ve adopted from ancient poetry practices and sort of morphed it into a modern interpretation. Some people identify with a muse that has its own personality and metaphysical makeup or disembodied presence. They may even name this muse or talk to it. Some adopt a favorite writer or poet to call their muse; meaning the person who inspires them to write, while choosing to relate their creative energies to something that inherently comes from within. Other’s call their inner creative spirit or that feeling of being in the “zone” of writing as spending time with or being influenced by their muse.

Core principals to ponder here are: from whence does our creativity come? Where do the ideas come from? How do we understand or define our role in the creative process? Is this creative energy the muse everyone talks about?

Ancient Greek poets would often open pieces of epic poetry with an “invocation of the muse.” This plea was directed to the gods of Greek mythology to serve as sources of inspiration and open the door to creative thoughts. Though contemporary professional writers might not open with a formal invocation, the process of summoning an inner muse, breaking through writer’s block, and finding artistic inspiration in our daily lives is just as important as ever. — How to Find Your Muse: 7 Tips for Getting Inspired, Written by MasterClass

Whatever you call or however you define your muse, how you handle yourself as a writer determines your partnership with your muse and how successful that partnership will be. You can choose to define it every step of the way, follow the creative energy where it leads you, or capture creative ideas that come to you — as a vehicle. I find, my creative energy comes from within, while poems come to me as if they are already alive and it’s my job to pen them. I feel, I receive these rather than write them myself. Perhaps that creative process makes sense to you — perhaps it makes me sound bat-poop crazy.

Surely you have experienced sitting down at a blank screen to write with nothing particular on your mind except the desire and openness to write. Before you know it, a piece has developed right in front of you. Have you wondered how this happens? You weren’t thinking of or developing a story or poem prior to writing but suddenly you find it comes out of nowhere. I find these moment to be one of the most mysterious parts of writing.

But aren’t creative energy and creative ideas a little, well, different? We know, as writers, that there’s something different about the way we think and operate, that regardless of how you define your relationship with your muse or how you engage in the writing process — it’s unique to each individual and there are no wrong answers.

Well, the only wrong answer…is to ignore it. In my experience, creativity, when ignored, will eat you alive.

Does Everyone Have a Writing Muse?

If you’ve never read Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, then let that be your next book purchase and read. King has been very generous with his knowledge of writing, his own writing process and experiences, and yes, he has some very interesting thoughts on the concept of the writing or creative muse:

“There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think it’s fair? I think it’s fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but he’s got inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know.”

― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Your elusive creative genius | Elizabeth Gilbert

This TED talk on the the inner creativity / writing muse will get you well started on answering these questions for yourself. It’s about 20 minutes long and well worth taking the time to listen.

How do you feel about the concepts presented by Gilbert? This idea of being “chased” by a poem had me laughing, for sure, but isn’t there something to that? While Gilbert has clearly spent a lot of time analyzing her own inspirations and writing process, I think you should take the time to do this for yourself as well.

Learn More About Your Writing Muse

Ask yourself these questions throughout your week:

• How do I identify, relate to, connect with my writing muse?
• How can I learn to appreciate this “force” in my writing life.
• Is it from within or from without?
• Is it divine?
• Is it merely a symptom of mental illness?
• Is it transcendence?
• How do I define my creative muse?
• Where does my creativity come from?
• Where do my stories and poems come from?
• Do I create or does creativity find me and work through me?

Spend some time this week thinking about what this concept of the writing muse means to you in your writing. Your writing process. Your sources of inspiration.

Moving forward in the May Writing Experience

Each week’s topic will include an introductory post with 2–3 follow-up posts on the theme. The next post on this theme is entitled: Connecting with Your Writing Source: The Muse. We’ll talk about ways you can connect with that inner (or outer) source of writing creative vision. How to keep it fresh and flowing, manageable, and usable. (“Tapping in” one might call it.) We’ll go over some key things you can do to keep this creative energy available to you.

Each week we will also present some Medium challenges for you so that you can grow your Medium experience as well. Here are your Medium focus challenges for this week.

Medium Challenges for Week 1

The following Medium goals for the week are ones you can do as your time allows over the course of your week. There are some helpful tips and information for each of the tasks.

• Take a stats inventory of your Medium profile before we do the work of the May Writing Experience. Take screenshots, do a spreadsheet, or jot down the current status of your profile so you can compare your numbers with what you have at the end of the month. Your follower count, average daily views and reads, how often you are writing and what, how often your work is being selected for distribution (and what things are being selected), the state of your MPP earnings, the number of publications you are writing for etc.
• Review your profile page. Is it demonstrative of your personal goals here at Medium? Does it represent you, your work, and your creative vision? If not, update it! Here’s an interesting conversation on color psychology that may influence the choices you make for the presentation and color schemes you choose for your profile.
• Let’s work on that BIO!! Much like your profile, your bio needs to help you meet your Medium goals. Review your bio and make sure it is working for you. Here’s a cool conversation about creative and impactful bios.
• Launch a self-promo campaign for your PROFILE. Now that your profile is updated to represent you better…launch a campaign to share your profile across your social media. Introduce yourself and your work. Invite people to come and see what you are doing here on Medium. Tell people who you are as a writer and the types of things you enjoy writing. Tips to get you started in promoting your profile: 12 Very Creative Ways to Promote Your Writing.
• Make some genre-niche-specific goals for your Medium platform. Not sure what this should be? That’s what your muse is for! Perhaps you want to narrow your niche or try out some new ones. Take some time this week to figure out — what do I bring to Medium and who are my ideal readers? Jot down the topics you want to explore or focus on with your writing.

Here are some resources for analyzing your niche and where you fit in on Medium:

• Select topics that interest you to follow but also as a guide for which topics your writing fits: HERE.
• Jessica WildFire The 30 Types of Medium Articles.
• Gwenna Laithland How to Find Your Niche in Anything.
• ◦•●Christina M. Ward ●•◦ Owning Your Niche as a Writer.

That’s all for this introductory post for The Writing Muse. Stay tuned for a few follow up posts on this topic. We’d love to hear how you are doing throughout the week. You can leave comments here or do a write up on your experiences. Be sure to tag ◦•●Christina M. Ward ●•◦ and Samantha Lazar so we can see how your May Writing Experience is going. We’d love to hear about your muse!