Creativity Under Fire

There's nothing my Muse (she/her) likes better than stillness. Over the years of our partnership, we've agreed on the terms of our relationship: namely, that I show up, hoping to write, and if she's in the neighborhood, will deign to drop by and leave me some raw material. It's a dysfunctional partnership, but it's ours. What matters (for her) is that I'm showing up, pen poised, mine relatively clear, ready to go.

This... is not easy.

"Relatively clear" is not my state of mind most days, before the whole stare-of-the-world gets factored in. Honestly, some days, the Muse could pull up in her ride, ready to toss an institutional brick through my proverbial mental plate-glass window, but I'm too preoccupied to hear her show up. And she doesn't accept being ignored. She gets sulky. Withdrawn. Reluctant. And ultimately: erratic, maybe the worst thing for a Muse to be when she's tethered to someone with a full life. Why do all the good ideas come when I'm driving, and not at my desk?

There was a time when my family was younger and my days were more fragmented, and the act of creativity had to be slotted and scheduled with military precision. "We'll write the Great American Novel, but only between the hours of 5:30am and 6 o'clock. Go!" That, also weirdly, worked. But the more time passes, and the more external chaos seeps in, the more those regimented periods of quiet have disappeared. Say what you will about my Muse, and I say plenty, but she also likes regimen.

I'm trying to practice stillness, then, in the face of great chaos. I have to remind myself of those times when regimen bumped up against real life, like a third novel rewrite performed as the foundation of my home was being shored up beneath me. "If you can write through that," I tell myself, "then why not in the middle of existential dread, too?"

Practice. That's what it takes. Practice and willpower. And maybe keeping my head down and ear to the ground to listen for the Muse, pulling up, feeling the heft of an idea, and lobbing it my way. The last thing I need right now is for her to drive off.

🧩 🦏