Bonfire of the Muses

Since at least Classical Greek times when the mythology of muses was first recorded, the inspiration for creativity has been as mysterious, as elusive, and as certain as any magic ever has been.

I’ve written three short stories in the past six weeks or so. They’re very different and—if I am allowed a little immodesty—very good. “Great Bones” is a ghost story, suspenseful. “Family Values” is a macabre social satire, grisly. “The 291” is a sports satire, funny. And now I’ve got a fourth story that occurred to me this morning as I was waking, a mystery. It is just busting to get out.

All this comes in a pause in my work on my fourth novel, Hotel Stella, which was going great until about May, when it just stopped.

Creative inspiration comes and goes like that, right? Hotel Stella was flying until it crashed. “Great Bones,” “Family Values,” and “The 291” were so unexpected I didn’t have time to think about where they came from until now.

The standard advice to any writer is but one syllable long: Write. Just write. Sit down and write. Sit down, shut up, and write. Just write. Write. Right? Any writer knows that it is that simple and yet it is not that easy.

I swear, I spent nearly every weekday in May sitting down at my computer, staring at the Hotel Stella draft up on the screen, and saying to myself, over and over: “And then…. And then…. And then…. And then….” In early June I started playing around with an idea for a short story. I couldn’t do anything else until it was finished. No sooner, and another one came along. After that, another one came along. (And by the way, I’ve already gotten a journal’s acceptance for one of them.)

Whew. I feel like I deserve a break for a day or two to contemplate this inexplicable creative process. So here we are.

How do we get this bonfire of the muses going?

Like a lot of writers, I’ve tried a lot of things. What works best for me is being alone in a room with my computer, door closed, lights on, music loud and hard, coffee hot, desk clear, phone off, internet browser closed. But all of that only works when it works.

Tomorrow I’ll start on the short story that occurred to me this morning. No doubt, I’ll think about it all night tonight until I fall asleep, and I’ll wake up wanting nothing else but to get writing.

Is all this a distraction from the stalled Hotel Stella, a story I love? Maybe. But a writer must follow the muses’ siren call.

How do you do it?