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

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

My muse is my subconscious, basically. Very few of my plots have ever come from rational thought; I wake up from sleep and they're there, demanding I write them. If I'm stuck on a plot point or a section of dialogue, racking my brain over it almost never solves it. I just leave it on idle and at some point over the next few days or weeks I'll wake up and I'll have it. Usually at 5am, and then I have to get up and write it down before I can go back to sleep!

It's a blessing, in that there's no deliberate effort involved, and a curse in that I can't easily make myself sit down and write. I have to wait for it to happen, which is why I turn out on average a fic every 3 months. And not very long fics at that ::sigh::. I'd give a great deal to be able to write faster, but when I do try to work with this stuff consciously I'm lucky to get 500 decent words out of a day.