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

[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.