Shiloh Walker has been writing since she was a kid. She fell in love with vampires with the book Bunnicula and has worked her way up to the more…ah…serious vampire stories. She loves reading and writing anything paranormal, anything fantasy, and nearly every kind of romance. Once upon a time she worked as a nurse, but now she writes full time and lives with her family in the midwest.
Museless
By Shiloh Walker
I’ll be honest-I don’t quite get the idea of a writer’s muse.
I don’t have a muse…I am museless and I finally figured out why, or at least, I understand why a little better.
My writing is mine. I am greedy. Mine, mine, mine…now granted, when I think my work sucks, I can only blame myself, not a muse. If the story takes a strange turn and readers don’t like it, I can’t go with… Well, the muse made me do it. It’s on me. Only me.
But when it’s good? I don’t have to share the credit with a muse, and I like that. It seems like a lot of writers who do have muses treat them as a separate entity, so to speak…even if it’s their creativity driving the muse. So they have to share the credit.
Does that make sense?
I’m actually pretty glad I don’t have a muse. Because I think it leaves me in a little bit more control. Yes, the story is going to often try to dictate how it should go, but I don’t feel like I’m a slave to a muse.
Once, I heard a reader ask a writer a question about a book. The reader asks, ‘Well, why did you have to do that?’ (The reader wasn’t pleased with how a certain book had ended). The writer responded with, ‘It was the muse.’
I’ve heard similar questions asked before, and have heard similar responses.
Another thing about muses-I’ve read/heard discussions where a writer is frustrated about changes an editor requests that go against what they feel their muse is telling them to do. Fighting these because of a muse? I don’t know, but it seems counter-productive.
Sometimes, author muses seem to come in the form of the characters-so the muses change for the writer from book to book. I can say that when I’m writing, my characters, and the story itself, tends to take on a life of its own and I am just putting it down on paper. But I still don’t feel that a muse is driving it. It’s the story…or it’s my overactive imagination.
A while back, I decided to do a little mini-poll on muses at my blog… a)yes, I have a muse b)nope, no muse, just an imagination…etc, etc, etc.
One of the commenters(mutltideofm) made this comment (in regard to whether or not she had a muse):
“I used to think so. Now I don’t. I think it’s given me an objectivity that I wouldn’t have in my writing otherwise. The no-muse model appeals to me because your fiction is your construct.”
And while I hadn’t thought about that aspect before, it’s a very valid one, and it kind of goes hand in hand with the ‘mine, mine, mine’ concept I concocted.
Since the story is my fictional construct, if there’s something that is holding the story up, or something that’s bogging the story down unnecessarily, once an editor/proofer/beta reader helps me to see what and (most importantly) why, I’m likely to be very open to change…and I can change it, because it’s is my construct…not a muse’s construct. I guess it’s my inner control freak-I want be in control (or at least delude myself into thinking it) and I can’t do that when I’m sharing the writing seat with a muse.
Shiloh’s latest release is part of her popular Hunters series. HUNTERS NEED, is out now! You can read an excerpt HERE.
