Muse: [myooz] noun. Definition: One of the Greek sister goddesses presiding over the nine arts of epic poetry, lyric poetry, tragedy, comedy, music, religious music, dance, history and astronomy. Alternate definition: A higher power/being/part of your psyche/annoying little voice in the back of your head that provides you with story/character/world ideas. Related to the plot bunny and a known cause of alt-itis. Basically what I'm saying is, I'm sure most if not everyone on this forum has a muse of some sort, regardless of how often and in what manner it manifests. Personally I have a hate/love relationship with mine. It has the tendency to go completely inactive when I'm wanting for plot ideas for RPs or fics, tells me to go post and then gets distracted or something because I completely lose my train of thought and forget what I wanted to post, and then when it's 4 AM and I want to go to bed it takes a powerdump on my head resulting in what could very well possibly be my biggest fanfic yet. Fine, muse, you win. I'll start working this out. But you had better not die on me when I'm actually working on the in-character part of this like you've been doing. So, uh... does anyone else have moments like that, or muses that are unusually complacent or evil or rebellious? Or am I just crazy or schizophrenic?
Mine seems to work more subconsciously. I rarely plan anything of my writing other than the basics such as characters, setting and very basic plot. I start typing and I kind of work in a flow state where I just type. This also applies to non-creative writing such as essays and the likes. I found this online about Stephen King that describes how I write incredibly well. "In his memoir, On Writing, Stephen King describes his process of writing novels. He is adamant about the fact that he does not consciously plan or piecemeal the plot or direction of his stories. Rather his stories emerge from his unconscious as preexisting wholes, requiring little as far as conscious effort or planning." Of course, King is far far better at writing than I am, but that describes pretty perfectly how I write. When I write poetry it's basically the same thing only I need to pause to search for words that work for the poem as I write. I'm not certain that this is what you're talking about, but if so that about sums it up for me.
My muse is always evil and rebellious. It is quite literally a bitch to me, often giving me very useful ideas that I can't ever make use of any time soon because it's not what I'm working on currently.
My muse only has two modes: it's GODOSTUFFGOGOGO or it's dead as a dodo. Sometimes I'll be writing or drawing like mad, have tons of ideas and be incredibly productive, as if in some sort of flow like Double said, but other times I have trouble writing out even one sentence. The problem is, my muse switches without warning and there's no saying how long it'll last. Sometimes it's a few hours, sometimes a few weeks.
My problem isn't so much with coming up with ideas as it is transferring them to paper. I'm simply not good enough with words to transfer it well to paper. As I said, I kind of work in that flow state I mentioned where I just type and the ideas come out as I type, but that doesn't matter when you aren't good enough at writing to make it any good. That's not to say I can't get better though. Just the opposite, I strive to improve. I'm just saying transferring the ideas and thoughts to paper is the most difficult part for me, and I feel a lot is lost in the translation. Think of it like translating a work that already exists from one language to another to another to another etc. until you et back to your own language. That's what it's like. And as I improve my writing, languages will be taken out of that mess as I get better at conveying the ideas. The translation can never be truly perfect though, as close as I may want it to be.
Oh, mine likes to do that from time to time as well. Really freaking annoying when you have a deadline because you want to update a project weekly but you haven't built up a buffer.
Oh, I know your pain BP, try writing a paper with the deadline the following day with a muse like that Dx
Thankfully mine is predictable. It most strongly appears when I am either under great emotional stress, or I am suffering a lack thereof -- but is still around, just a lot quieter, during the middle periods. Outside of that, the only other thing that really gets my muse going is listening to music. Really my big issue is not having enough hours in the day to do everything that I want. If I could, I'd have an extra hour in the day where there is nothing but me, some music, and a word processor. Alas, school, work, and having kind of a social life get in the way of that, among other things. :<
Yeah well, see, I don't have a social life so that's ONE distraction less for the muse. I'm with you on the extra hour per day though. I WISH I could have one hour in which all I would ever do is write, preferably non-stop, and I think a lot of writers would feel the same. Whoever designed the rules of the universe was not kind on us.
My Muse it quite off. I love stories, I love telling them, but I usually let my artwork express my story or how I feel. I do, here and there elaborate on stories and poems but I never have the heart to keep it going. I do, hopefully, plan on writing a novel, an alternative version of a story that I am working on, albeit I can't due to my lack of insperiation.
My muse enjoys trolling me. On the worst days I will just have no idea what to do with anything. On the best I STILL won't have any idea what the devil I am doing but it sort of works out anyway. Generally though on the times I get hit by awesome ideas, I am somewhere like on a bus with no way to write them down or use them, and when I get back I am burnt out by the day and have little energy to devote to poasting.
Aurelia, do NaNo. You'd get that novel written. That's what it's for c: This sounds a little wierd, but I don't have much experience with a sporadic muse. I just kind of... write. When I have time, I sit down and start writing. I don't remember sitting down and not being able to write anything, except for a few times in NaNo when I wrote myself into a corner. There have been times, though, when I've been deprived of a writing medium for extended periods of time (like over the summer) and I start thirsting for a computer to let all these ideas out onto a page.
