A Complex Relationship

My Muse has been getting inconvenient again, and I appreciate her for it.

That is, I've been trying to keep with a daily habit of writing for some time now, moving from the old annual cycle of NaNoWriMo where I'd devote September through November to plotting and planning and plantsing, and the remainder of the year to non-writerly activity.  Since deciding to start writing in earnest, the best way to hold myself to that decision was to insist that I do something, daily, to advance the cause. And like any muscle, I'm finding the small regular workouts are adding up.

We have a weekly informal group that meets at the library, plus a night class, plus online read-and-feedback sessions, and I'm thinking of starting a casual monthly lunch group at work as well. It's not that I can't get enough, but that I'm trying to keep the pledge in different ways. Get-togethers and Zoom calls with other writers "counts" as daily writing, I tell myself. Insisting on a weekly blog post (like this) "counts" as writing. Retyping my class notes or collecting and responding to beta reader feedback "counts." There's a complex scoring system in my head, making sure we're getting the run in, basically, and it's happy when a writing day doesn't always mean a writing-writing day.

Except the Muse isn't fooled. I picture mine as an irascible force, an close friend or black-sheep family member that has no qualms about crashing on my metaphorical couch at a moment's notice. In NaNoWriMo days, it felt like keeping a hibernating bear. Most of the year the Muse would sleep, and then I'd start poking her with a stick (also metaphorically) around September, and then she'd wake up irritated and hangry and we'd work through November to get something done. Then I could give her a cookie and make don't you think it's about time you take a break noises and shuffle her off for another year. 

For hobbyist and casual writing, this was fine. Maybe not the healthiest partnership, definitely one-sided, but fine. My muse is more bear than human, I thought, and this complex relationship worked for us. She stayed out of the way of my vocation and my home life, and I didn't demand much in return. NaNoWriMo's collapse and my enrollment in those evening classes were almost perfectly co-incident. It was time to take stick in hand and see what the Muse thought about this change in situation.

Well, she was reluctant at first. She's me, and I'm nothing if not a creature of comfortable habits. Imposter Syndrome reared up as it does, but the impetus of you have homework and a prompt was enough to keep the Muse preoccupied and not worrying about the pokey stick and instead flexing sleepy synapses to produce something new. And as I've written about here, that became a community and that community is where I am now. But something else also happened: what I think of as the September Miracle, where fleeting ideas appear out of nowhere and threaten to vanish in moments, like soap bubbles in a windstorm. Being a writer means writing on the regular (whatever form that takes) but also being a listener and unless you're very careful, a forgetter and a regretter. 

Anne Lamott talks a lot of about ideas, their ephemeral nature, and the practicality of carrying an index card and a pen to note them down when they drift by. For all my Muse's bravado, she can be awfully whispery with stray thoughts, and they come in bursts. Nothing for a while, and then a pile of things, all at once. It's alarming at first, and my phone--my digital index card--is often the conduit to channel them. I have a number of fragmentary emails-to-self and shopping lists that are plot ideas and backstory thoughts for works in progress. Freed of the tyranny of a calendar, the Muse is now sitting on my mental couch and occasionally shouting back at the TV, usually when I've got something else going on at the same time. (The number of plot ideas that come up during toothbrushing is alarming.)

So, it's a complex, evolving relationship, a year-round thing. I'm enjoying her company if not her timing, and she's enjoying being out of the cave for more than three months of the year. We may never be a totally functional writer/inspiration couple, but I'm celebrating the irregular dance that we're performing.

🧩🦏