Shoot Your Muse

Inspiration is a fickle thing. I find it both confusing and annoying, and I'd like to politely beat it over the head with a shovel.

For example, allow me to detail the events of this past week:

• I finished most of the rewrite of my book in a single day (like, 30 out of 43 chapters).

• I studied querying and how to write good queries extensively, then rewrote my query letter and synopsis.

• I researched agents and submitted queries to 14 of them.

• I came up with a new story idea for the book after this one and started outlining its plot points.

That brings us to today, where things are not nearly as wonderfully productive. All of my motivation to do any sort of writing-related activity has fizzled out and died. I thought about my new story idea the whole time on my drive to work (I have a 45-minute commute). I had vivid pictures of the world and the thrilling challenges the protagonists would face almost bursting from my mind. I was so excited to start writing it on my first break.

Once that magical moment arrived, I opened up a Word Document, hastily filled in my premeditated opening line, and then... nothing.

I barely managed to squeak out three paragraphs of setting description and character introduction before my brain felt deep-fried. After such deep and excessive mulling, I'd expected to have a bit more to write than the steaming puddle of poo that dripped out of my brain this morning.

And that's not all: This same situation has happened four times already. I polish up my manuscript for "Uhyre" (which I've been working on for over two years now), I send off my query letters, and then I resolve to start on a new project - something fresh and exciting that agents will love! But once I get down to it, I find that I'm either not interested in the idea anymore, it's just plain horrible, or I get stuck and have no idea where the plot is supposed to go. So, with the resolution that the inspiration has passed, I give up.

This leads me to a question that I've been pondering for quite some time now:

"Is it better to force oneself to create, or to wait for inspiration?"

On one hand, I feel like waiting for inspiration to smack me upside the head is pointless, and it will take forever to get anything actually finished. But on the other, it seems wrong to push myself to write when my heart's not in it. It seems that my choices are either small pockets of quality writing, or long strands of bland nonsense. That can't be true, though.

To answer this question, I have decided that I must first answer a different question (this philosophical drivel is always so interconnected):

"Is inspiration the catalyst of creation, or the result of it?"

I believe that the first option is my current mindset (as much as I'd like to fight against that), simply because of the influence of the "World" on how I view the creation of art. People say stuff like, "Felt inspired today, so I wrote a few chapters," or "I'm really in the writing groove today." They talk about their "muse" as if it's an electric feather, alighting on their head and zapping their brain with ingenuity.

In reality, I think I'm discovering that inspiration and the ever-fleeting "muse" are more like prey, and we artists are the hunters. We're not going to step out our front door and immediately have a large buck walk up and hand us a loaded rifle. We have to trek out into the wilderness, slog through mud and rain, and chase down that son of a gun. We can't rest until the bullet has pierced its heart, allowing its pliable body to drop out of the sky and into our grimy, calloused hands.

Anyway, I'm gonna go slam my head into the wall and then get back to writing. Hope you all have an enjoyable, productive week! For fun, here's the opening line that I'm playing with:

"No one told me that the apocalypse would be this beautiful."

See you next time!

- Tyler