9:13 AM
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Do you feel an overwhelming urge to crawl back to bed when you face a blank page to start a day's writing? You need your secret weapon to combat times like these. Your best friend in getting over that initial fear of writing is your muse.
A muse, in its most basic form, is someone else to blame. Most of the time, that is enough.
The author of Pray, Eat, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, gave an incredible TED talk on this subject, looking at what she referred to as 'the genius', the term taking from the Romans. However, muse is a Greek term which can be described as follows.
Muses in the ancient Greek were often portrayed as scantily clad women, inspiring through the arousal of sexual desire. But that wasn't their primary purpose. They were both the embodiment and the sponsors of the arts. If the muses chose to grant you the necessary skill and inspiration, you could produce great art.
A very important distinction of rules should be set. The purpose of the muse was not to arouse inspiration within you, but rather to bestow inspiration and passion upon you. You are responsible for working when the inspiration comes. That inspiration however, will be given to you by your muse. If you try to sit down and write but nothing comes up, it is not your fault. The muse was not with you that day. You are, of course, responsible for doing everything you can to win the fair muse over, but no more.
Your muse is necessary to a writer's development but she is not the only element you require. She is the external part that assures you that there is some higher meaning to your work. Having found your muse, it is time to look inside yourself at the three aspects of you that make up the writer: your Genius, Creative Youth and Critical Elder.
GENIUS
Elizabeth Gilbert used this term in reference to a muse. However, a lot more use these concepts in different ways. This term can also be crossed-over with elements of what can be called the creative youth. Yet, it is best to separate them out for a fully coherent structure and set of creative relationships.
Genius is completely your own, not like the muse. It is part of your subconscious that sits away in a room you cannot enter, playing its secret games. So just like your muse, the genius is not really under your control and can be a bit fickle.
You have to keep feeding your genius. It likes to work on problems, whittling away at them until something beautiful has been created. With your activities, you feed it little scraps. You cannot force it though. You cannot pull up the hatch and just grab at anything. You will offend your genius by doing so.
Your muse can take a lot of the pressure off from you, even if it seems silly to have two such figures in your life. Separate out the two from your conscious self, and you will never have to beat yourself up about your work ever again.
CREATIVE YOUTH AND CRITICAL ELDER
There are dual natures of your conscious creative process called Creative Youth and Critical Elder. These terms were developed by Dorothea Brande in her book On Becoming A Writer back in the 1930s. These are actually not at the level of the subconscious, and can be trained to be under your control. Basically, these are your left brain and your right brain at work.
Your creative youth doesn't care much for grammar and spelling, preferring to run and jump, sprint along and tell wild stories. He is like the 'inner child' people suggest getting in touch with. If you train him properly, he will give you entire first drafts. In order for you to be able to sit down, write on demand, and actually have a continuous stream of words come out, then you need to get to know the two dual natures.
Beside his lack of grammar, the problem with youth is inconsistency. He's not consistent unless you train him to be. You can't just rely on him to make you a writer. If you wait for him, wait for 'feeling like writing', then you could be waiting a very long time, and in the end will have a thousand pieces of different stories.
That is where your critical elder comes in. The elder is wonderful in two, and only two, situations. They consist of controlling his little brother to get him to sit down and start, and then editing. He is a wonderful editor. The elder is the rational part of your mind that can be self-disciplined, loves structure and clarity and wants everything to be ordered.
Firstly, the elder will make your creative youth sit on a chair and talk. You must learn to make him step back, though. Make him not interrupt you until the end of the first draft. The elder can, if you let him, become bossy and overriding, trying to correct the youth at he goes along, which, as you can imagine if you have elder brothers, causes the youth to not want to help at all.
Don't allow your elder to bully your youth so much that he sulks in the corner. If this happens, sharply rap your elder over the knuckles and set about coaxing your youth back with promises of adventure and freedom. You cannot let the flow stop from coming for any reason. It may be easy to ask someone else to edit and proof-read your work, but getting the creative ideas down on paper in the first place is what makes you a writer.
In your second draft, your creative youth could have ran off, and might be called upon to answer a few questions about what he meant by this and that, but on the whole is not interested in rehashing old material. This is where the elder comes in. He is more than happy to sit down and go through each paragraph sentence by sentence, making sure it is all correct and in order.
You will get the most out of your writing when you train the two to work together. Your genius will be throwing in ideas that you never even considered before, your muse will bless you and all will be right in your world. Your work will become faster and freer.
A muse, in its most basic form, is someone else to blame. Most of the time, that is enough.
The author of Pray, Eat, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, gave an incredible TED talk on this subject, looking at what she referred to as 'the genius', the term taking from the Romans. However, muse is a Greek term which can be described as follows.
Muses in the ancient Greek were often portrayed as scantily clad women, inspiring through the arousal of sexual desire. But that wasn't their primary purpose. They were both the embodiment and the sponsors of the arts. If the muses chose to grant you the necessary skill and inspiration, you could produce great art.
A very important distinction of rules should be set. The purpose of the muse was not to arouse inspiration within you, but rather to bestow inspiration and passion upon you. You are responsible for working when the inspiration comes. That inspiration however, will be given to you by your muse. If you try to sit down and write but nothing comes up, it is not your fault. The muse was not with you that day. You are, of course, responsible for doing everything you can to win the fair muse over, but no more.
Your muse is necessary to a writer's development but she is not the only element you require. She is the external part that assures you that there is some higher meaning to your work. Having found your muse, it is time to look inside yourself at the three aspects of you that make up the writer: your Genius, Creative Youth and Critical Elder.
GENIUS
Elizabeth Gilbert used this term in reference to a muse. However, a lot more use these concepts in different ways. This term can also be crossed-over with elements of what can be called the creative youth. Yet, it is best to separate them out for a fully coherent structure and set of creative relationships.
Genius is completely your own, not like the muse. It is part of your subconscious that sits away in a room you cannot enter, playing its secret games. So just like your muse, the genius is not really under your control and can be a bit fickle.
You have to keep feeding your genius. It likes to work on problems, whittling away at them until something beautiful has been created. With your activities, you feed it little scraps. You cannot force it though. You cannot pull up the hatch and just grab at anything. You will offend your genius by doing so.
Your muse can take a lot of the pressure off from you, even if it seems silly to have two such figures in your life. Separate out the two from your conscious self, and you will never have to beat yourself up about your work ever again.
CREATIVE YOUTH AND CRITICAL ELDER
There are dual natures of your conscious creative process called Creative Youth and Critical Elder. These terms were developed by Dorothea Brande in her book On Becoming A Writer back in the 1930s. These are actually not at the level of the subconscious, and can be trained to be under your control. Basically, these are your left brain and your right brain at work.
Your creative youth doesn't care much for grammar and spelling, preferring to run and jump, sprint along and tell wild stories. He is like the 'inner child' people suggest getting in touch with. If you train him properly, he will give you entire first drafts. In order for you to be able to sit down, write on demand, and actually have a continuous stream of words come out, then you need to get to know the two dual natures.
Beside his lack of grammar, the problem with youth is inconsistency. He's not consistent unless you train him to be. You can't just rely on him to make you a writer. If you wait for him, wait for 'feeling like writing', then you could be waiting a very long time, and in the end will have a thousand pieces of different stories.
That is where your critical elder comes in. The elder is wonderful in two, and only two, situations. They consist of controlling his little brother to get him to sit down and start, and then editing. He is a wonderful editor. The elder is the rational part of your mind that can be self-disciplined, loves structure and clarity and wants everything to be ordered.
Firstly, the elder will make your creative youth sit on a chair and talk. You must learn to make him step back, though. Make him not interrupt you until the end of the first draft. The elder can, if you let him, become bossy and overriding, trying to correct the youth at he goes along, which, as you can imagine if you have elder brothers, causes the youth to not want to help at all.
Don't allow your elder to bully your youth so much that he sulks in the corner. If this happens, sharply rap your elder over the knuckles and set about coaxing your youth back with promises of adventure and freedom. You cannot let the flow stop from coming for any reason. It may be easy to ask someone else to edit and proof-read your work, but getting the creative ideas down on paper in the first place is what makes you a writer.
In your second draft, your creative youth could have ran off, and might be called upon to answer a few questions about what he meant by this and that, but on the whole is not interested in rehashing old material. This is where the elder comes in. He is more than happy to sit down and go through each paragraph sentence by sentence, making sure it is all correct and in order.
You will get the most out of your writing when you train the two to work together. Your genius will be throwing in ideas that you never even considered before, your muse will bless you and all will be right in your world. Your work will become faster and freer.
About the Author:
Relevant information about writing tips is discussed in Buffy Greentree's blog site. More about overcoming your writing fears is discussed in another article.
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