FINDING YOUR MUSE

By Raegan Teller

Creative types talk about having a muse, and I used to wonder what they meant. Is a muse an actual person? In Greek mythology, nine goddesses, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, were muses who presided over the arts and sciences. In more recent history, muses were typically women who inspired male artists or writers and were often their lovers or spouses. For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, credits his wife Zelda Sayre as being his muse.

But not all muses are women, and in fact, not all muses are people—at least not living, breathing beings. In fact, the Oxford dictionary defines a muse as a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative person. If you happen to have a real person as your muse, congratulations. I often get inspiration from friends and family, but what I want to discuss here is the “personified force.”

The muse lives in the right side of the brain—the creative side. Our critic lives in the left hemisphere—the analytical side. Most of us can easily tap into our critic, but how can we access our creative side where the muse lives? For some, their muse can be invoked through a ritual, like lighting a candle, playing a certain type of music, practicing meditation, or through right-brain-sparking exercises like freewriting.

I found my muse, whom I named Daphne, through an exercise called subdominant handwriting, recommended by a creative life coach. Since I’m right-handed, my left is subdominant. My process was to write a question I wanted to have answered (e.g., a troublesome plot point) with my dominant hand. Then I switched the pen to my subdominant hand to respond. According to some neurological research, this process allows you to access the lesser-used region of your brain. I can validate the research by saying that when I tap into my subdominant side, I manifest creative, expressive, and insightful thoughts.

The more I practiced subdominant handwriting, the more the ideas came to me, and the clearer the messages became. My creative juices flowed from a much deeper place. Eventually, this inspirational force became a personified presence, and I could shut my eyes and see my muse’s face (“hello, Daphne”).

To be clear, I don’t write an entire story or book with my left hand. This exercise just helps me tap into my right brain more easily than simply writing, which is a linear, left-brain process. If you want to know more about subdominant handwriting , I recommend The Power of Your Other Hand.

You can access your own personified force through freewriting or other right-brain exercises. Or you might try adding a ritual that signals your brain you’re ready to connect with your muse. I encourage you experiment and find whatever works best for you. When you make contact, then nurture and treasure your new friend.  

Do you have a muse? I’d love to hear from you.

THINKING about WRITING

By Sharon May


I imagine professional writers sitting for long hours each day, pounding out words. Actually, most writers have other obligations and have to squeeze writing in when they can. I have reduced my commitments quite a bit, especially during the COVID-19 period. But I still word-process for only three or four hours a day. However, my mind really never stops writing.

As Eugene Ionesco says, “A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.” The phrase “thinking about writing” isn’t simply the mental beating yourself up to get started writing, which is what we hear from beginning or struggling writers. It is important not to let that be the only type of thinking you do. Instead, the mind should still be intensely focused on how to produce a well-written product, even far from the computer.

Once you start writing or working on an idea, then the mind becomes a little obsessed. Characters follow you when you leave the computer behind for a while. Conflicts play out in your head as you watch the six o’clock news. When you lie down to sleep, thinking about writing seems to take over completely. Characters make noise sometimes to the point of keeping you awake.

Other times, you may write while dreaming and wake up with an answer to a problem. I have a friend who writes poetry in his sleep. He will wake up with lines for a poem, and simply jot them down on a notepad by his bed. Occasionally, the dreamy writing is so good that he heads to the office immediately.

I don’t write in my sleep, but I do think best in a prone position in a recliner, on the bed, or on the couch. When I’m working out voices for a narrator or working on the scenes needed to drive the plot, I don’t write out all possibilities, I first think deeply about them first. At times, I have had to figure out what to write next so often or for so long, that Peggy worries I’m sleeping too much. The cats, however, prefer me to lie down, but hate it when I suddenly jump up to start word processing once I have solved my writing problem.

When thinking about writing, the biggest problem is how to retain ideas. As many of you know, sometimes the best ideas come in the shower and when driving. Be sure to keep an audio recorder or notebook with you. A friend bought me a waterproof notebook. If you have nothing to record your ideas, try repeating the key words until you are able to write them down. The more you practice just “thinking,” the more apt you are to remember the ideas and wording for longer periods of time.

For me, this the most productive aspect of my writing process, and it leads to better writing. I hope you “think” productively too.

SUBJECTING NATURE

By Bonnie Stanard

The Plum Tree Tavern publishes poetry that focuses on “specific images of physical nature...[which are] preferred over the writer’s judgments of the image.” I revised my submissions because of Plum Tree’s guidelines and one poem was accepted, which is not the point here. The guidelines suggest more than just an approach to writing a poem.

A TREE AS ME

Editor Streur writes that “the personification of nature trivializes nature.” Personification is evident in some of my poems which, upon consideration, I can see shows a lack of appreciation for the inherent value of nature. Just consider Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees,” which gives a tree arms, hair, a mouth and bosom.

POEMS WITHOUT I

According to Plum Tree Editor Russell Streur, “Once the writer injects his or herself into the picture, the poem often becomes more about the image of the writer than about the image of nature.” Obviously we can’t completely remove ourselves. What would be left? Textbook descriptions? However, he admits that “sometimes the I works” and makes the point that writing about nature is different from writing your thoughts about nature.

WRITING YOUR THOUGHTS

You can write about cockroaches until your fingers are blue, but it won’t be as fascinating as a photo or video. A strength of the written word is its ability to reveal notions and feelings that aren’t visible or audible. Personally, I’d rather see a glowing sunset on Netflix than read about one in a poem. Unless, and this is the caveat, the sunset is used to inspire human reflection.

NATURE’S DECLINE

We don’t write about a flock of blackbirds landing in the hay field or the vigor of kudzu because most of us live in suburbia where nature is imprisoned. We write our experiences. We write about a cardinal at the birdfeeder, which is more favorably met by editors who live in suburbia.

NATURE AS VICTIM

Nature’s beauty is for me to enjoy. Animals are to be eaten. Minerals to be mined. Plants to be cultivated. Do we look at nature as a means to accommodate our needs and comfort? Editor Streur’s guidelines warn us against putting our ego above ecology. It’s “the same arrogance that allows the pipeline to be built across the tundra.”

LAST WORD

A quote from Albert Einstein: “A human being is part of the whole, called by us “Universe”; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but the striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”

BECOMING a FAN of FAN FICTION

By Kasie Whitener

I just delivered a “Fan Fictions Basics” class on Outschool wherein I told three tween girls to think about a specific who in a story they loved and then consider all the peripheral questions about that who.

For example, we meet the Wicked Witch of the West through Dorothy’s point of view in the Wizard of Oz and are never told 1) why she is wicked, or 2) why she is green. Enter Gregory Maguire’s book Wicked (and the Broadway musical it spawned) to address both the Witch’s backstory and her unique bathing ritual. Not to mention giving us her name, Elphaba Thropp.

Fan fiction is born of a reader’s experience with a writer’s missed opportunities. The reader says, “Yes, but…” and questions the writer about something. The writer, responds with disdain, “That’s not the point of the story.” Or, in George R.R. Martin’s case, simply sneers at the reader or the daring novice who dares to write in Martin’s world.

Fan fiction is that often maligned effort of novices to stay engaged in a writer’s world a little bit longer. In the class, my students said they thought the writer should be flattered that people wanted to stay engaged. I tend to agree. The questions Maguire had about the Witch are what led to his writing Wicked.

What is The Mandalorian but a Disney-studios-backed fan fiction? Rogue One, Solo, and The Clone Wars animated series are all Star Wars universe stories that grew out of fans’ love for the world George Lucas created. In Martin’s defense, fans can get a little silly. Fifty Shades of Grey started out with vampires because the author wanted more Twilight and decided to write the Bella-Edward sex scene we all deserved.

Tweens write fan fiction because they identify with the character, the situation, or the place and want more story. But authors sometimes finish with a character, situation, or place and move on. What’s a fan to do except try writing their own story in that writer’s world?

Platforms like Wattpad have developed communities of fan fiction writers wherein hungry readers can find satisfying re-tells, one-offs, and side-stories for their favorite worlds: Harry Potter, all the Marvel Comics, Keeper of the Lost Cities, and of course, Game of Thrones. Here fans connect with other fans and share complaints of unfinished storylines or underdeveloped characters. Here they reimagine what authors have put forward for consideration.

I am learning to love fan fiction in all its novice awkward tweeness. Though it’s been around for a long time (it’s where we get the phrase “Mary Sue”), it has largely been ignored or derided by the literary establishment. Real writers write new stories, we usually say. But there’s something just fun about jumping in, feet first, to the indulgence of fan fiction.  

You cannot make money on fan fiction, so why do it knowing you’ll never sell this? Because finding insatiable readers can be a payoff of its own.