This blog is about Muse. It may lead you think I am completely insane or cause your head to explode. I take no responsibility for either outcome. You have been warned.
Muse. What is it?
My answer to this question is that Muse is the inspiration and the magic that transforms an image, or a song, an idea or a word ... an anything into a concrete something else. Ie: a story plot, scene, character.
According to the online dictionary a Muse is: the spirit that is thought to inspire a poet or other artist; source of genius or inspiration.
Some people say their Mu
se has a form, a personality. They look to animals or mythical creatures - the unicorn seems to be especially popular - to bring their Muse to life. I don't know if I'd ever want to confine my Muse in that way, its like putting it in a box. Perhaps it's because it seems to me that my Muse changes or alters somewhat depending on the story it brings me.What about you? Does your Muse have a form? A personality?
I find myself intrigued by the different ways a Muse can be inspired. Not every Muse finds inspiration in the same places or in the same way. Some people find music especially inspiring. Others are visually stimulated. Some find it in the things that happen around them, in what people do and say.
I'm very much a visual person when it comes to finding inspiration for my stories. Art. Photos. Movies. I find inspiration in all these things, especially in pictures.
Sometimes I'll see something and it'll just hit me. An experience not unlike being shot by Cupid's arrow. Other times, I might be writing about a forest or a wood and need some inspiration, so I'll troll though hundreds of pictures to find the one that captures the kind mood I want to invoke in my reader. (I love google!)
When I find it the Muse kicks in. I can see and smell and hear and feel that place. I'm there. It's real. And that's just what I need to insure I take my reader there too.
This is one that inspired one of my forest scenes:
I find this method especially helpful when building characters. I know who they are in my head and what they look like, more or less, but I'm not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. I cannot give my characters shape apart from the words I use to conjure them and yet I can find something of them in the art of others.
This also works well when I've been away from my work for a while and I need to get in touch with my characters again, fast. A picture can pull me out of reality and back into that other place and time in a snap.
What about you? What gets your Muse going? Where do you find your inspiration?
