Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. Click here for more information about IWSG and to see a full list of participating blogs.

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I’ve written before about the difficult relationship I have with my muse. We never seem to be in sync. I want to write, and she’s not in the mood. She wants to write, but I’ve made plans with friends, or I have to leave for work, or it’s three o’clock in the morning and I’m trying to sleep.

This September created a lot of extra strain between me and my muse. You see, I moved out of my old apartment and into a nice, new house.

What my muse doesn’t seem to appreciate yet is that this new house will be a much better environment for both of us. No more loud music from the apartment upstairs, no more noisy traffic outside the bedroom window at night, no more strange smells wafting in from across the hall.

There’s a lot more space and a lot more natural light. There’s even a reading room. A room just for reading! How cool is that?

The process of moving disrupted all of my creative endeavors, which infuriated my muse; however, things bounced back to normal a lot sooner than I expected. In the final week of September, after all the moving was finished, I wrote over 18,000 words, which is probably a personal best. I’m taking that as a good sign for things to come.

At the moment, I’m still sort of living out of boxes and I’m on the hunt for new furniture. Any suggestions for things I can do to make my new house an even more writing-friendly environment?

The first Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group day. It’s a sort of group therapy session for writers. Click here for more information and to see a full list of participating blogs.

Today, I want to once again turn the floor over to my muse, who has some insecurity issues of her own.

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Hello. I’m James’s muse. I’m the little voice inside his head telling him to write. Unfortunately, I’m not the only one in here, and some of the other voices don’t have my writer’s best interests at heart.

Sometimes, these other voices are oafishly blunt, saying things like, “Your writing is bad and you should feel bad.” Other times, they’re a bit more crafty. “Gee,” they’ll say, “you’re really busy today. Too busy to write. Why don’t you do it tomorrow or next week?”

This nonsense is easy enough for me to ignore, but my writer gets confused and flustered.

The only thing I can do is try to make sure that my voice is the loudest. But even then, the negative voices still find ways to sabotage my writer’s efforts.

Are there are other muses out there having this kind of problem? What have you done to combat all this internal negativity and keep your writers on track?

Hello. I’m James’s muse. For the last few months of IWSG, James has allowed me to take the floor and share some of my insights on musing with my fellow muses. But today, I’m going to turn the floor back over to James so he can tell us what it’s like to work with a muse as delightful and wonderfully helpful as myself.

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Shh! Don’t tell my muse about this, but I’ve found a way to trick her into helping me write, even when she’s not in the mood. I’ve developed a writing exercise where I write something so horribly, painfully bad that it offends my muse’s literary sensibilities.

Doing this forces my muse out of hiding so she can fix all my mistakes. Mind you, she gets angry. She mutters all kinds of nasty things about me and my mother. But she does come out, and eventually we start writing some useable material.

My deliberately bad writing style is inspired by a YouTube video called “Half Life: Full Life Consequences.” For those of you who haven’t seen this masterpiece of badness, it’s a dramatic reading of a work of fan fiction based on a video game.

Fellow writers, please spare a few minutes to watch this. You won’t regret it.

So what do you do to coax your muse out whenever s/he is too lazy otherwise indisposed for writing?

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If you or your muse found today’s post helpful, please let us know in the comments below. Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. Click here for more information about IWSG and to see a full list of participating blogs.

Finally, my muse turns up. She has some fantastic inspiration to give me, and we’re making real progress on our current writing project. The hours fly by. Words come easily. Writing should always be like this!

And then, my muse tells me to stop.

For the last few months worth of Insecure Writer’s Support Group posts, I’ve been turning the floor over to my muse so that she can tell us about her mystical world of imaginary things. So today, I thought I’d ask her: what’s the deal? Why do I have to stop writing just when things are going so well?

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Hello. I’m James’s muse. That means it’s my job to give James that tiny flash of inspiration he needs to start writing. But a good muse (and I like to believe I’m a good muse) concerns herself with more than just writing. She must remain mindful of her writer’s happiness, health, and general well-being.

And that means signaling to our writers when it’s okay to stop.

My writer obsesses over writing schedules, looming deadlines, and word count quotas. As a result, he suffers terrible anxiety whenever he doesn’t live up to his own lofty expectations. He argues with me, telling me I don’t understand the pressure he’s under—whatever that means.

But last week, my writer ran into trouble finishing a blog post for his Solar System series. He wanted to just plow through it. He thought he knew how to fix it. But I told him to relax, and for once, he listened!

As a result, the blog post came out a day behind schedule, but it ended up being one of the best in the whole series (at least in my writer’s opinion).

Creativity only grows in the right environment, and it won’t grow in the mind of a fatigued and frustrated writer. That’s why responsible muses must tell their writers to take breaks, eat nutritious meals, and get a full night’s sleep.

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If you or your muse found today’s post helpful, please let us know in the comments below. Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. Click here for more information about I.W.S.G. and to see a full list of participating blogs.

As has become my custom for these Insecure Writers Support Group posts, I’m going to turn the floor over to my muse. She has something she wants to say, and maybe its advice your muse would like to hear.

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Hi, I’m James’s muse. As such, I live inside James’s brain, and since James is a huge science geek, I have access to a surplus of sciency factoids. Here’s something from some English bloke named Isaac Newton.

Objects in motion tend to remain in motion and objects at rest tend to remain at rest unless acted on by an external force.

This “law of physical motion” caught my attention. As a muse who’s spent countless hours studying her writer’s habits, both the good and the bad, I would like to propose my own “law of writerly motion.”

A writer who’s writing tends to keep writing and a writer who’s not writing tends to keep not writing unless acted on by an INNER force.

My fellow muses, that inner force is us. We don’t need to hold our writers’ hands through the entire writing process. We only have to provide that initial push. Once writers get started, they generally keep going due to their own momentum.

It’s also our responsibility as muses to let our writers know when to stop. I’ve learned to be careful or my writer will either hurt himself or ruin his story. More on that in next month’s Muse Chat.

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If I had my way, I’d keep writing and writing without end. It’s annoying when my muse forces me to stop, but I guess she has her reasons.

Anyway, if you or your muse enjoyed today’s post, please let us know in the comments below. Click here to find out more about the Insecure Writer’s Support Group and to see a full list of participating blogs. Next month, my muse will tell us about the “writing speed limit.”

Welcome to the Insecure Writers Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. Click here to find out more about the group and to see a full list of participating blogs.

For last month’s IWSG, I turned the floor over to my muse, that ethereal being who nags me when I skip writing sessions. For this month’s IWSG, I’ve asked my muse to explain where, precisely, she goes when I have writer’s block.

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Hi. I’m James’s muse, and that means it’s my job to make sure James does his writing. This job can be… challenging. Sometimes, my writer has other obligations, so I must try to be patient. Other times, my writer gets lazy, at which point he needs a stern lecture concerning his writerly responsibilities.

But there are also occasions when my writer is pumped up, eager to write, positively bubbling with enthusiasm… but I’m not ready. So he just sits there, pen in hand, blank papers arrayed in front of him, waiting for me to tell him what to do.

He starts to worry. He wonders where I’ve gone. He wonders if I’ve left him. Am I ever coming back? He’ll start calling my name, asking what he’s done wrong and begging me to forgive him for various imagined misdeeds.

What writers don’t understand is that sometimes we muses need time. It’s delicate work, weaving together the tiny threads of the subconscious into a coherent story idea. When a muse is in the midst of this sort of work, she MUST NOT BE DISTURBED!

My fellow muses, if your writer starts to panic (symptoms include persistent pacing, weeping, or hyperventilating), calmly suggest reading a book, going for a walk, or maybe taking a nap. Try to reassure your writer that so-called writer’s block is just a “do not disturb” sign from his or her muse, and that some brilliant idea is in development.

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If you or your muse found today’s post helpful, please let us know in the comments below. I’m thinking these Muse Chats will become a regular feature here on Planet Pailly. Next month, my muse will be talking about her “law of writerly motion,” whatever that is.