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Three Tips for Connecting to the Writing Muse

Take Time to be Alone and to Find the Writing Muse

With an inspired idea, writing flows easily. Your concept, story, or purpose of your piece comes alive. Writing becomes not a matter of discipline; but a matter of inspiration. Flowing from deep inside, sometimes you feel you can’t capture it fast enough. Tuning into the inspiration is half the battle. Creative people sometimes refer to this mysterious flow of inspiration as the muse.

How to Get Inspired to Write

In Greek Mythology, the Muses are the goddesses of the inspiration of literature, science, and art in Greek mythology. I believe the muse is simply your connection with a higher power, God, The Universe, or Source. Writers tap into a greater intelligence or their own genius when in the right frame of mind. I have listed a few tips how myself and other writers that I know get themselves into the inspired writing state.

Writers who are looking for inspiration often find it by getting away from normal daily life. Sometimes a walk in the park among nature can give just the inspiration you need. My entire career launched with a three-month writing sabbatical to the Caribbean 6 years ago. It was true love and I have not stopped writing since then!

Continuous nurturing of the inner self through contemplation, reading, meditation, prayer, and personal development. Writers are people with something to say, something to share. In order to have something exciting to share, writers must have a relationship with their soul. Great writing initiates from the soul.

Research and study of your subject. If you are working on a novel or a fiction piece, finding out as much detail as possible regarding the geographic area, timeline, or the cultural norms of the characters, will help your story come alive. If you are creating a non-fiction piece, research on you subject matter will provide further inspiration. Reading what others have written on the subject brings up new questions regarding what has not already been covered on the subject. You will want a fresh new approach than what has been done, and once you find that direction, inspiration will be forthcoming.

Guilty as Charged: 1st Degree Writing Procrastination

Procrastination is a complex subject, but is particularly troubling with writing procrastination. Who hasn’t procrastinated writing a term paper? Or who hasn’t procrastinated to the point of having to stay up all night?

I had planned to write this article five days ago. Each day I didn’t write the article, a negative twinge of guilt grew. Now that I have overcome my disease it, I find it amusing I procrastinated writing an article on writing procrastination! The ironic thing is that once I got going, the article only took 20 minutes to write! The danger with procrastination in writing is that it can lead to a downward cycle through further guilt, anxiety, doubt, loss of self-esteem, inspiration. This can lead to a cascade of procrastination events, eventually leading to “writer’s block.” How can we stop writing procrastination in its tracks? First, identify what type of writing procrastination might be experiencing. Writing procrastination can be caused by three underlying issues:

Perfectionism: This is one classic cause of writing procrastination. In the mind’s eye we imagine the writing piece to be unrealistically grandiose. Deep down, however, we know the writing will only be “perfect” after several rewrites, edits, and proofreading. Knowing that it will not be “perfect” right off, we chose not to do it at all. The solution is to break up your writing assignments into smaller sections, and rough drafts, such as Rough Draft One: Chapter One, Section One. Write emotionally and passionately, knowing later you will come back for Rough Draft Two: Chapter One, Section One, and so on. Name your files as such. Remove perfectionism pressure by doing small pieces on a weekly or daily basis.

Deadlines: Believe it or not, deadlines can cause procrastination. Deadlines are necessary in writing else we would never see a daily newspaper! However, if you are writing on your own, deadlines can be deadly. Depending on your personality, deadlines may be too much pressure. If you tend to rebel at the thought of time pressure, go easy, and approach writing in a gentler way. Perhaps joining a writing group will inspire you to write. You can share your writing without the pressure of writing for an artificial deadline.

Inspiration: If you are not inspired, no words will spring from your pen, or keyboard. So stop trying to write and instead get inspired. How do you get inspired? This is different for different writers. If you find that as you sit down to write, you have nothing to say, use your writing time to get inspired. Go for a walk in a beautiful setting, or take a hot bubble bath! Put on your favorite music, sit and meditate for a while. Plugging into the muse is key in getting your flow going. Share your tricks for overcoming procrastination in the comments below.