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A Letter to My Errant Muse
Dear Fred,
You and I have always had an uneasy alliance. I pooh-pooh the whole idea of a “Muse” as something akin to the myth of “writer’s block,” and say “I don’t need a Muse, for crying out loud.” You snicker and fling me a link to that scene in “The Sound of Music” where Liesl swears she doesn’t need a governess and ask if I’d prefer to have one, rather than a Muse.
We wrestle over wording. I revert to the prosaic prose of the technical writer; you stab me with a knife dipped in lemon juice and suggest that I dip my fountain pen in the blood and carve the words on bone. I get lost in the thesaurus or dive down the rabbit hole of Google; you slam the book on my nose and tell me to stop dawdling. We make a good team — I’ll grudgingly admit that much.
You’re a bit lazy in the inspiration department. Perched, there, on the arm of the chair, you mutter something about going out, having experiences, finding my own inspiration. “Write what you know,” you hiss. “Well, whaddayaknow? You never take me nice places…” Bitch, whine — what good is a Muse who has to be constantly entertained? If I go out and fill the well from which I draw my own inspiration, why should I keep you around? Just to feed your popcorn addiction? You eat my chocolate and throw me razzberries. When I suggest that providing inspiration is your job, you recite poetry, for God’s sake…
