How Well Do You Know Your Muse

By Len Lawson

If you meander around any writing circles long enough, eventually you will hear the buzz word muse. What is it exactly? By its original use, the muses were the nine daughters of the Greek god Zeus. Each possessed a power of the arts of music, dance, writing, etc. Used as an action the word muse simply means to meditate on something.

However, in today's culture, a muse is considered to be some object or external source that inspires an artist of any genre. For example, a beautiful flower may be the muse to inspire a poem. Typically, the muse is a significant other hence many love songs and poems. Pulitzer Prize- and Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison argues that the muse is ironically a figment of the imagination and that it cannot be the scapegoat for a writer's ability.

I offer my own definition of muse as I see it to this debate. One person or object should not have power over a writer determining whether he can write at a particular moment or not. If a woman is my muse, then if the woman is taken away, where will my writing ability go? Should I have to run out and find another woman to be inspired? If it is not a woman, then will another object suffice like a sunset or the moon? How can the muse simply change with the passing of the day?

The muse can best be described as an outward expression manifested from the creativity and given talent that lies within. When I see a sunset, it may cause my creative ability to be stimulated to the point where I can articulate and interpret into language what I visualize. Alternatively, a memory may spark my creativity to give a voice to the past that had not previously been allowed to speak. The muse takes on many forms, but it is based in my gift as a writer.

I challenge you not to look for landscapes or lovers for inspiration but to look within yourselves to discover someone within you that you may not have previously known. When you do discover the muse, it is like meeting a life-long friend for the first time, a friend that you will want to be with every moment because of the revelation and motivation she brings.

She does not have to be a goddess though to be appreciated. The muse can be weak or strong depending on how we nurture her. We can do this by reading and writing daily so that she can process our intake into something gorgeous that we did not expect to bring forth. If she languishes, then we will wonder where our inspiration will come from and we may seek it externally in other people or objects instead of allowing her to meet us at the point of our nurturing. I invite you to invest in your muse today so that she can yield many incredible returns for a lifetime of aesthetic fulfillment.