RE: muses

[permetaform]

th_nightengale mentioned muse-independant v. muse-dependant creation of artwork, and wondered about the possible demographics of creators who might or might not work with a muse.

[Poll #480760]
Personally, I work independant of a muse but keep on hearing about them occasionally in that other people use them. musesfool helped me clarify the idea of a muse in that the way I'm addressing them here is specifically as a separate individual entity.

If you do work with a muse, what form do they take and/or look like? Do you know what they look like? Do they change depending on your project?

Also, could this be at all culturally motivated? ie. more of an emphasis from western cultures who have a tradition (from the Greeks) of muses? OR could it be more prominent from cultures who do not like to accept the idea that inspiration/creativitiy/intelligence comes from oneself? (versus a higher being? or an alternate being?)

[edit] This also brings up interesting issues around sources of inspiration, and faith; can/should/could inspiration be attributed to outside sources? Common western psychological thought is that outside voices are simply hallucinations. But other lines of argument argue that creativity is simply a perception of more levels of possibility than those that occur in our current realm of existence...

[interesting threads]
- here (started by karose)
- here (started by sorchafyre)
- here (started by karotsamused)
- here (started by ranalore)
- here (started by aliaswestgate)
- here (started by billradish)
- here (started by th_nightengale)

[interesting followup post]
Muses and Friends - a poll and some discussion about a possible link between muses and the use of imaginary friends

[NOTE] The purpose of this post is to present a friendly forum for discussion. Please keep the discussion friendly and open? Concern is valid, so is criticism; but please keep an open mind. ::hugs flist:: Cool beans?

Comments

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I answered yes, but the fact of the matter is that I'm very much like musesfool in my conception of a muse. I use the term to refer to various characters, aka "My Sanzomuse is not being forthcoming on the smut" or "My Schuldigmuse is a RAT BASTARD." This is not to say I honestly believe independent personages have taken up residence in my brain. What it means is that some part of my brain has "tagged" this character as being inspirational, and when I'm inclined to write, I allow those parts of my brain to interact with my main brain, and with each other, much in the way actors interact with each other and their director.

I am telling myself stories, and I'm doing all the voices. When I really click, what you call "in the Zone," I'm doing the voices really, really well. I'm doing them well to the point that my main brain might come up with an idea that's not "in character," and the part of my brain that "tagged" that character will "tell" me that the idea doesn't work. I suspect that's what mistressrenet means by veto power.

[nightengale.livejournal.com]

::blink:: That makes *so* much sense. 'Cause I always had a really hard time comprehending what writers influenced by characters, but who didn't claim them as *muses*, would categorize those characters as.

Thanks. But I've got a question (as always with me):

Do the tagged areas of your brain ever surprise you with a plot, or a character motive/facet, that you didn't expect, or didn't previously understand about that character? Can your "main brain" have a truly spontaneous "discussion" with those "tagged" areas, then?

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Do the tagged areas of your brain ever surprise you with a plot, or a character motive/facet, that you didn't expect, or didn't previously understand about that character? Can your "main brain" have a truly spontaneous "discussion" with those "tagged" areas, then?

Well, of course. Because the areas of my brain that tag characters are usually operating on a more subconscious level than my "main (read: conscious)" brain. Those parts are taking those characters, breaking them down, analyzing them, considering them, building their internal logic and backstories from what canon has given me, and then presenting the final result to my conscious brain. The result can often surprise or startle me at first, because I haven't consciously thought about most of it as yet.

[nightengale.livejournal.com]

But-to be perfectly clear here-you still credit yourself completely, in one way or another, with the actual writing process. Okay.

What about inspiration? Do you get it from things around you, as other people have mentioned?

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

With the writing process? Yes. With the initial ability to write? Combination of myself and God, I believe. And I really mean believe in the religious sense.

My brain wouldn't "tag" characters if they weren't inspirational, in that I want to write about them. Plot inspiration, scene inspiration, concept inspiration, can all come from various forms of sensory input. Call these things inspiration, muses, triggers, what have you, we all have them. Something has to push you to write, and often that something also provides at least part of the framework of what you're writing.

[nightengale.livejournal.com]

Something has to push you to write

Good point. Even if we don't anthropomorphize it. That's definitely something I think we can all agree on.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. I rather thought that was the whole point of thise post.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

This post, of course. Forgive the misspelling.

[nightengale.livejournal.com]

Well, actually...the point was to discover that fact. I didn't previously know whether some people could push themselves to write without external inspiration; whether everyone needed at least some sort of external impetus, such as an overheard conversation or a certain song; or whether the idea of muses was truly universally recognized, though I strongly doubted that last option.

I'm surprised, really, by the variety of responses. And by the fact that so far there *is* at least one consensus: that *something* external needs to spark us, whether it be a song, a muse, or an internalized understanding of a character we lifted from some source external to ourselves (fandom).

::shrug:: I'm simply fascinated by what this is revealing about the writing process. ^____^

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's because I've spent most of my adult life writing and discussing writing with fellow writers, but external impetus is usually taken as self-evident. The impression I was under was that this discussion was about what form the internal conversion from impetus to creation takes, but now you're making it sound as though it's really about where writers get their ideas. There's a reason writers get impatient with that question; it implies there's some kind of magical formula we know that a non-writer doesn't. There is no magic formula. There is a natural inclination to interpret input in a way that's conducive to writing, and there is training that hones that inclination (or, to a certain degree, creates that inclination).

One of my closest friends is a brilliant visual artist. Her creative process is much the same as mine; her chosen medium of creation is different, based partly on natural inclinatiion.

[permetaform]

I didn't previously know whether some people could push themselves to write without external inspiration

::peers:: wait, I'm a little confused by this, could you elaborate?

'cause for instance, I get the feeling that I get most of my ideas during midterm/final season because my brain in general is on "OVERDRIVE" and thus both the creative and the logic sectors of the brain are engaged and thus all those things simmering on the backburner also gets kicked up into high-gear...so in that respect, it's external inspiration because usually a phrase in my text books 'causes a creative burst, but they're not at all personified.