The Writing & the Muse
The Chicken and Egg problem of the writing world
Ask a precocious kid to tell you which came first—the chicken or the egg—and she’ll put her hands on her hips, jut out her chin, and confidently proclaim:
“The egg, silly!”
Then some adult—a teacher, a parent, or smarmy friend—will smirk and ask one simple follow up question guaranteed to blow that precocious little mind:
“Yeah, but who laid that egg?”
In writing, there are no end of chicken and the egg questions:
Which comes first, the drafting or the planning?
Which comes first, the character or the premise?
Which comes first, the writing or the muse?
It’s that last question about the writing and the muse I’m interested in on this the last day of the second week of NaNoReviseMo. While revising my novel is my clear priority this month, I’ve eased the throttle a bit to leave myself time to dabble in other writing projects—a weekly newsletter, light exploration of the new novel I’m planning to write when the revision is finished, writing for a class I’m taking, and finally tackling a couple essays that have been on my to-be-revised list for far too long.
Again, the novel is the priority—it has staked its claim on the vast majority of my heart and my time—but I’ve found that saving a few dances a week to tango with other writing projects makes me feel more creatively alive than working on the novel exclusively, even when all I’m doing is creating an index of every page in my journal over the last year where I mentioned that new novel idea or digging through my sent files to collect my thoughts about a topic I’m considering developing into an essay.
I understand the argument to be made against spreading energy across so many projects: If time and attention are a finite resource, and the novel is a project hungry for as much time and attention as I can afford to give it, wouldn’t focusing all the time and attention I have on the novel be the smart play?
For many writers, the answer is yes.
For me, though, the answer is the answer is almost always no.
Sure, there are times when the answer might be yes. When I’m in a final push, say, but not in the middle of a revision that requires heavy lifting. The muscle of my book needs down time to heal and grow, right?1 Toggling to other writing projects allows me to rest my novel muscle by building up my essay muscle or my short story muscle. As an added bonus letting my brain ping pong between ideas reinforces the idea that writing is play, an idea that keeps me open to the playfulness of new ideas.
This morning while I was making my breakfast before the early writing session I normally spend revising my novel, I started to hear voices.
One voice, actually.
The voice of the main character in a short story idea that—before this moment—was nothing but a premise I briefly considered during a writing exercise for that class I’m taking.
And this wasn’t some tentative whisper.
This was the kind of monologue that rarely makes the finished draft of a story but often serves as an on ramp in that direction. So instead of sitting down to my revision first thing as per usual, I gave myself a half hour to try to capture the pre-breakfast missive from my muse.
Which brings me to that last writerly chicken and egg question: Which comes first the writing or the muse?
After listening to my anecdote about the voice of my character speaking to me, that same precocious kid might once again put her hands on her hips, jut out her chin, and confidently proclaim:
“The muse, duh!”
But the correct answer—for me, anyway—is the writing.
The more I write, the more ideas I generate, as if writing is the combination on the locker of the imagination. As if every hour I spend writing is like kindling on the flame of creativity. As if writing builds the raft that makes shooting the rapids possible.
Hopelessly mixed metaphors aside, do you think it’s weird to think like this?
If we can accept that we live in a world where radio waves are out there just waiting to be tuned into—90.1 gives you NPR while 92.9 gives you classic rock2—or that movies and TV shows are in the cloud waiting for us to stream them or that we’re an app away from listening to music we don’t own on record or tape or CD, then is it really so crazy to think that there might also be a current of ideas waiting for us to figure out how best to dive in?
I don’t think it is.
I think the best way to dive into that current is to write as widely and as regularly as I can because for me, the writing doesn’t just come before the muse—it’s the music that inspires her to dance.
So write on, you lovely NaNoWriMos, you.
Write on.
As far as I remember this was why
As a bonus, tuning into 92.9 will give you not just classic rock, but the particular angst that comes with realizing the music you grew up with is now considered classic.
Cross-training :-)