Waiting for the muse to strike

I just read a post by Elizabeth Black at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association. It's titled: 'Don't wait for your muse to strike; you'll wait for ever.' It's a topic I'd already been pondering after a period when I managed to get thousands of words done despite being run off my feet with other work and family commitments. 

Elizabeth points out that you can't wait for inspiration

to strike, or you'll never write anything. She advises setting yourself goals, treating writing like a vocation, establishing a routine and creating a support network of people who take your writing seriously.

I've read other advice about the importance of routines and of having a workspace conducive to creativity. I find setting up a routine hard when no day in my life is the same due to strange working hours, family duties and having to make the most of good weather to get down to the allotment. (Stop laughing. I mean generally. I know we haven't had any good weather of late.)

But Elizabeth is quite right. You can't wait around for ideal conditions and expect that they will suddenly make you uber creative where before there was nothing. I remember when I first started journalism training, a fellow student mentioned that they were waiting for inspiration and our tutor took great delight in laughing at her expense. (Humiliation being one of the main methods of training journalists.) Deadlines don't wait for inspiration, and even though your work as a fiction writer might not involve news editors swearing at you at 8am, you still have to get the words on the page.

I got thousands of words written in January when I had a weekend away. I wasn't actually meant to be alone; my partner and I having suffered a minor blip. But the fact that I went alone turned it into a kind of writer's retreat. It was a snowy weekend, which meant I didn't want to drive anywhere once I'd arrived. The cottage was a fourteenth-century building in the countryside with a wood burner (and not much other heating). It was ideal for writing. I'd get up, write for a while until I got hungry, cook breakfast then head out for a walk, during which time I'd mull over ideas (as well as imagining that the animal prints in the snow looked just like I'd imagine a panther's prints to look). Then I'd get back and write some more, with a beer, until I got hungry again. After that I'd spend several hours coaxing the woodburner to stay alight so I didn't freeze to death and get eaten by the resident mouse.

I probably wrote a similar number of words earlier this week. I've had a big editing job to do. I've volunteered to do extra shifts at work. I have the usual family stuff. I've booked to run a five-mile race on Sunday which I really needed to train for. I decided, in my wisdom, to write stories for about six calls for submissions with April 1st deadlines. Which is apt, because I must be a fool.

The point is, that I had a sudden burst of creativity in which I managed to write in a notebook on my knee at work, I mulled stories in my head as I commuted, I typed up late at night when I should have been asleep, I wrote in the twenty minutes I had between the school run and gym class, I wrote in bed, at the dining table and on the couch. I'd probably been storing up inspiration from a million and one little observations and experiences and suddenly there was room for no more.

What's my message here? You can't wait for these periods of creativity. If you're going to be a writer you have to write regardless of whether conditions are ideal. But if you're going to be a writer, you'd better be ready for the muse to strike when conditions are far from ideal as well as in those times when you find yourself alone in an isolated cottage. And yes, that is the cottage pictured above. It's in Shropshire, England, it sleeps two and you can book it at the Landmark Trust.