This Week We're Meeting Our Muses

Only one in 10 of my poems ever makes it to publication. My prose is even worse. Sometimes, I produce to a respectable standard, but sometimes, I’d do better without a pen in my hand. This is true of most writers, although I do know a few irksome ones who get it right every time.

I hate to disappoint you, but you probably aren’t one of those irksome people. Nor am I, but not all great writing happens because we use the right tools and mechanics. Most of my awful writings happened when I didn’t have much to say. Most of my better writings happened when I was thinking about something passionately. If I write about a topic that doesn’t touch my heart in the moment, it won’t touch my readers’ hearts either.

Great writing comes from the secret thoughts you have at 3 am during a bathroom break. Great writing comes from that great idea you had at lunchtime but forgot to write down. Great writing comes from the revelations you have as you go about your day. In-between the vegetable aisle and the checkout counter, ingenious ideas manifest. Muses only appear when they want to.

You cannot achieve greatness unless you leverage all of the fragile, transitory ideas that are a part of everyday life. Writers should carry pens and notebooks everywhere, but it’s just as well our phones can do the job well enough. Becoming a great writer requires us to learn how to spot and preserve the creative thoughts we have when we’re doing other things.

If your sole writing habit is to turn up at an empty page with an empty head, you will probably not achieve greatness. The writing lifestyle requires you to be a constant observer of your inner universe. The ideas will arrive on their own. The trick is to recognise them and put them on paper immediately.

I’m going to ask you to focus on your thoughts today and write something that arrives in your head uninvited. We don’t get inspiring thoughts every day, so this isn’t something you can force. I’m not going to give you a genre or structure. You might write a description, a character sketch, a poem, or a story. It doesn’t need to be a full, completed piece. It can be a random paragraph or string of words. It doesn’t matter. The point is to grab the small treasures that come to you uninvited.