Courting the muse ...
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Where does the potter go to find the perfect bit of clay with which to create the perfect vessel to contain a shooting star’s dreams?
When the Norse gods set out to bind Fenris, and were told that the only things that would make a rope strong enough to limit that elemental wolf’s powers were:
the sound of a cat’s footstep;
the beard of a woman;
the roots of a mountain;
the voice of fishes;
the longings of a bear;
the spittle of birds,
where did they go to find these things?
Where do you go to find your muse?
Or, more correctly, how do you invite your muse (she’s usually referred to as female, but she probably shapeshifts to accommodate that form) to grace you with her presence?
Author Philip Pullman—no stranger to uncertainties, mysteries, doubts—describes the process he follows as involving silence, persistence, trust. ‘Stay at your desk,’ he advises. ‘You wouldn’t to miss a brilliant idea because you weren’t there to receive it.’
So how might the muse present herself? Here’s how Pullman describes such an event.
One afternoon, I found myself confronted with the sudden and very surprising knowledge that Lyra [the protagonist of his best-selling His Dark Materials trilogy] wasn’t alone, as I’d thought.
Note that Pullman didn’t say that he suddenly had an idea. He’s not describing a conscious, rational process here. It’s a confrontation – a confrontation that was hoped for, with no idea of how, when, or where it might appear – a confrontation both sudden and surprising – a confrontation that brings instantaneous knowledge – a confrontation that one has to open oneself up to, unconditionally.
She had a companion, of a kind I’d never imagined, never dreamed of. Her companion was the daemon Pantalaimon, and as soon as he appeared, the story could move on, and so it did – for another 1300 pages. But it took weeks of sitting there just idly waiting and writing the same thing over and over again, as alchemists, in one of their operations, are said to have evaporated and condensed and distilled the same liquid over and over again, countless times, in defiance of common sense. Eventually, they believed, something would change in it, without warning, and its very nature would be transformed into something of wonderful and immense value. Common sense, of course, knows quite well that nothing of the sort will happen. Common sense also knows that you should always make a plan before you write a story. Common sense would never have discovered Lyra’s daemon. All very well in its place, common sense; but it gets frightened and jumpy and irritable among mysteries. It’s no help in the dark, but the dark is where the stories are.
Philip Pullman is onto something here. He speaks with the voice of experience and authority. I don’t disagree with him. I do find stories emerge from ‘the dark’, but, for me, they also emerge from ‘the light’. What’s more, for me, the ‘once-upon-a-time-place’ from which and in which both light and dark, time and space begin, and into which they end, is where you’ll find not ‘stories’ but ‘story’.
I think this is what he means when he says, “Stories aren't made of language: they're made of something else … perhaps they're made of life.”
This is the final instalment in the monthly writing competition and course that I’ve been running to share some of the content of my next book: Master the Art and Craft of Writing. The final chapter in the book is all about ‘Magic and Mystery’.
Rather than writing ‘about’, ‘of’, or ‘on’ that topic, it is designed to encourage you to write ‘from’, ‘in’, ‘with’, and ‘by’ the magic and mystery of inspiration, guided by your muse.
But muses are tetchy things. You’ve got to love them for it. They want to be courted. They want you to prove yourself to them. They want to get to know you.
How do you facilitate that?
Storyteller and writer Martin Shaw recommends putting out sustenance for them – in the same way that many people put out a thank you offering of food and drink for Santa and his reindeer, or the way that people put out a saucer of milk for the wee folk.
Perhaps one way might be to write a letter to your muse, while being enveloped in your muse, feeling yourself writing with your muse because you are being written by your muse.
One thing I do know is that there is a space of deep silence in which my muse dances – that same deep silence which gives rise to the silence which births sound.
While the illustration for the section in Master the Art and Craft of Writing by Carol Michelon featured at the start of this post provides a visual stimulus, the theme for this month’s competition – the final one in the current series – is open-ended. The goal is for you to be inspired, enchanted, overtaken by your muse – to find for yourself, a process similar to the process Philip Pullman follows as he sits at his desk and stares at the wall blankly until he finds his pen moving over the paper …
Submit an entry and you could be the lucky winner of a $10 Amazon gift voucher. The first fifty entrants will receive a free copy of my forthcoming book, Master the Art and Craft of Writing, and every entrant will receive a free sampler of writing exercises.
What do you have to lose?
Full rules here.
Deadline: Midnight on Wednesday 25th February 2023 BST - EXTENDED TO MIDNIGHT ON WEDNESDAY 1 MARCH 2023
Upload your submissions here and share them on social media with the hashtags #unknownstoryteller #carolmichelon #leonconrad #artandcraftofwriting
This Course and Competition is part of The Unknown Storyteller Project, focusing on the art and craft of how to tell a story; Master the Art and Craft of Writing is the counterpart to Story and Structure: A complete guide, IPNE Book of the Year Award 2022 winner, Firebird Award winner, NAA Gold Award winner; Readers’ Choice Book Awards Bronze Award winner; INA Book of the Year Award finalist; IPNE Book Award finalist; Honourable Mention in the SoCal Book Festival Awards; shortlisted for The People’s Book Prize. The book explains how to structure the story you want to tell in the first place and will help you shape great stories to tell.
With a breathtakingly simple and yet profound handful of symbols, Conrad has created a flexible and precise system for analyzing the inner structure of stories. With this lens he lays bare the absolute essence of all the imaginable story forms, from fairy tales and quest stories to tragedies, riddles and koans. It's a powerful tool for storytellers and scholars and will change forever how you view the simple but profound act of saying “Once upon a time..”
Christopher Vogler, author of The Writer’s Journey
How do you court your muse? What’s worked for you? Leave a comment in the comments section. I look forward to hearing from you!