IWSG: Muse Chat

So I went through a tough 2014 and ended up dropping off the face of the Internet for a while. I missed several installments of the Insecure Writers Support Group and had to re-sign up.

But rather than talk about that, I’m going to turn the floor over to my muse. She has something she wants to say, and maybe she has some advice your muse would like to hear.

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Hello, I’m James’s muse. That means I’m a supernatural being sent to guide James through his journey as a writer. Or maybe I’m a symbolic representation of some aspect of James’s psychology. Or maybe I’m the personification of a growing mental disorder.

Details, details… it doesn’t really matter who or what I am. All you need to know is that I’m a muse, and a muse’s job is to ensure that her writer does his writing.

This job can be frustrating, to say the least. Writers invent all kinds of crazy excuses to skip writing. But believe it or not, some of these excuses might be legitimate. For example:

• Your writer might complain about some sort of emotional stress and blah, blah, blah. You and I know writing is the best cure for that stress, but give your writer a chance to simmer down before you point this fact out.
• Your writer might complain about being too tired or hungry to write. This turns out to be a legitimate excuse. Writers are mere mortals, unfortunately, and do require occasional food and sleep.
• Your writer may claim that a beloved relative is ill. Depending on which relative we’re talking about, this might be a legitimate excuse.
• Your writer might say he/she has to go to work. For some reason, writers need money. They use it to do something called “paying bills.” So this “going to work” thing is a legitimate excuse, I guess.

It’s important to remember that we muses are ethereal beings existing in the realm of the imagination, a place where anything is possible. Writers live in an alien world full of burdens and limitations and time constraints. So, my fellow muses, don’t be too hard on your writers when real world problems get in the way of writing.

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Let me know in the comments if you or your muse found today’s post helpful. Click here to learn more about the Insecure Writers Support Group and to see a list of participating blogs.

My muse will return for next month’s IWSG to explain why she stops talking to me whenever I have writer’s block. That should be interesting.