feeding your muse

I wanted to post something inspirational today. Yesterday's post? Well ... I feel rather bad about it. I don't mean to sound negative, but I'm a realist. I think we all have days when writing is more pain than delight, more terror than thrill. But if we have too many of those days, we may lay down the pen, put away the keyboard, starve our muse from sheer fear and neglect. So, we must find ways to continue to "feed our muse," in the words of dear Uncle Ray. (Note: If you're new to my blog, I've adopted Ray Bradbury as my honorary uncle.)

We must strive to look at things in a new way; stir up things now and then as to see what comes of it; stop to look and listen, though we may get the occasional odd stare. I'll admit it. I've eavesdropped on others' conversations, hoping some overheard tidbit will offer a story idea or help me hone my dialogue-writing skills. I'll do just about anything to keep my muse fed.

Uncle Ray tells us we must "stuff ourselves" with food for our muse. What is this food? The stuff, the sights, the sounds, the impressions of life. Okay, Uncle Ray says it much better than I ever can:

"Similarly, in a lifetime, we stuff ourselves with sounds, sights, smells, tastes,and textures of people, animals, landscapes, events, large and small. We stuff ourselves with these impressions and experiences and our reaction to them. Into our subconscious go not only factual data but reactive data, our movement toward or away from the sensed events.
These are the stuffs, the foods, of which The Muse grows."

You heard Uncle Ray. Let's get out there, folks. Stuffing ourselves with the foods of life. Let's feed our muse.

Fine Advice from Uncle Ray

I'm busy plotting the novel this weekend. I've stumbled upon an efficient means of laying out the plot, and I do mean "laying out." More will be revealed later.

I don't have much in the way of family. Both my parents were somewhat estranged from their siblings and we moved away from my relatives, mostly in Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas, when I was twelve. I find family where I can. Sometimes, where I create it or imagine it to be. To this point, I'm a big Ray Bradbury fan. If I had an uncle I actually talked to, I'd want him to be like Ray Bradbury -- with lots of stories about strange carnivals, freaky characters, and life on Mars. So, I think of Bradbury as my Uncle Ray: a silver-haired gentleman wearing thick, black eyeglasses, a bit eccentric, and always with a story to tell.

This passage comes from one of my favorite books by Uncle Ray, on "releasing the creative genius within you," Zen in the Art of Writing.

"Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jump, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next -- life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was -- a whisper.

What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping."

Thanks for the fine advice, Uncle Ray.