Inspiration and Perspiration: Part Two - The Muse

CW: In our previous piece, we began to address our two requirements for writing: inspiration and perspiration. The Muse is a part of our inspiration. She is the goddess of creativity, an otherworldly creature inspiring the artist at work. She has usually been portrayed as a being outside of us.

The Albert Brooks movie “The Muse” and our writing experience remind us that the best Muse lives inside us if we will only heed her calls.

She usually can’t be forced. She waits while our ideas come up, hibernate and percolate. As we wait, often frustrated, we remind ourselves that we need more substance (e.g., research, practice, imagination, notes to ourselves.) What we are about to write next is something new, but still unknown and incomplete.

Then one day she appears. Slowly or quickly. She moves into our thoughts, minds, and hearts; she is there most our life, and through our waking and sometimes sleeping hours. What we then write ideally flows, and sometimes goes laboriously slow.

Barbara gives us some examples.

BW: I thought I had finished my book The Natural Soul two years ago. I gave it to an agent. A few months later the Muse sent me a new chapter. It was inspired by a friend who was having a lot of trouble realizing that this great man she was dating was “Him.” I started putting a few thoughts down on paper. I separated Hollywood’s myth of romance with the personal experience I like to call, “The Love of my Life.” I wrote the missing chapter for my book which I then called, “The Love of our Life.” It was then that the book sold.

A few weeks later, I was going over the final touches before sending the manuscript to be published. It was then that the Muse took over once again.

I emailed Kenneth Ring, a colleague from our research into Near-Death experiences for an endorsement. He answered that he just finished an article for the Journal of Near-Death Studies on after-death communications with a near-death experiencer we both knew who had died a year ago. This deceased man was now communicating from the other side of the “veil” with a few people here in this reality. His name was Tom Sawyer (no, not the one from Mark Twain,) although his personality certainly stood out like Twain’s Tom. All of his communications, some with people who never knew him when he was on Earth, sounded exactly like the Tom we knew.

I couldn’t sleep. In the middle of the night I added a section to a chapter in the book, called “Soul Contact across the Veil.” I typed a new subheading for this section: “Tom died. Or did he?” I thought, “Finally…I’m going back to bed.” But I still couldn’t sleep. Tom didn’t want just a section in a chapter; he wanted his own chapter! Within a few days, with the help of the Muse now as Tom, the new chapter flowed. The Muse had my fingers dancing on the keyboard.

I really thought the book was finished this time. I was on my way to the gym. After my workout, I was headed to the printer to print the 130 pages of my book to be mailed. Believe it or not, I got two emails from Tom’s friends immediately before hitting the gym, saying I could interview them for more information.

Halfway to the gym, I was living the scene in “Oh God” when John Denver is driving and George Burns, as God, is in the back seat talking to him. I wasn’t going to the gym. I was getting some quotes from Tom’s two friends. I turned the car around and went home. At nine that night, I was still working on the paragraph I had gotten from each interview. It made the chapter even stronger.

And after all that, what did the Muse teach me?

When I think a manuscript is finished, and when the Muse is finished with it, are totally different deals.

Charles and Barbara Whitfield share a private practice in Atlanta helping adults that have addictions and/or were repeatedly traumatized as children. They are the authors of 15 published books and numerous articles. They also give talks and workshops. For more information, visit www.cbwhit.com and www.barbarawhitfield.com