CAN YOU FOLLOW YOUR MUSE ON A WHIM?

If writing isn’t in your blood, if it isn’t a passion, it’s work. If you’re on a crunch for time, every moment is precious when you can sit down at the keyboard or the notebook or whatever medium you use to write. On the other hand, if it’s truly a passion and you have something to say – in other words, the muse hits – you drop everything and go with it. True?

This is something I deal with all the time. I’ve chatted with other writer’s and received feedback that dropping everything, even for a short while, to pop off a short story (or an article or anything) while working some other project is unthinkable. For whatever reasons, some people can’t break concentration to follow another thread.

How about you?

CONCENTRATION

This is the same thing as multitasking. If you get a muse, an idea, you go with it. Your nature is to follow it through.

On the other hand, what do you do when you run across multiple muses? Do you have the capability to follow several of them at the same time?

Some people can’t do that. Understandable.

For some, writing takes too much concentration and effort. It’s not that it isn’t a passion, but it’s still so much effort…let’s say, lack of proficiency? They need to place all of their energy on one thing at a time.

Is this your state right now?

Or, are you proficient enough that you can multitask? Can you concentrate on multiple threads?

LOSING THE MUSE

There’s the case of humming right along on a novel. Then an idea comes up for a killer short story. Or, a different idea for an even better novel. You set aside the novel you were working on, pursue the whatever it was. Then you either finish it or it crashes and burns. Now, you come back to the original idea and pffft! It’s gone!

Has this ever happened to you?

Me?

Never.

I’ve heard of the fear of this happening to others.

I’ve wondered if it would ever happen to me. In a small way, it has.

How?

Right now, I have four novels I’ve started over the years but never completed. For one reason or other, I stopped writing on them. The muse petered out. I lost interest or moved on to something else. One day, I may get back to them, but for now, they’re sitting idle in my files. I had an A and a B but never filled in the in-between. Other bigger, better things drug me away.

SUMMARY

The thing is that I constantly write. I constantly multitask. I have many muses, most of which I complete. I don’t have many failures, but those that one might consider failures, I consider incomplete at this stage.

The point being, I can follow my muse on a whim. Writing for me isn’t such a burden that I have to drop everything and concentrate on one thing only to git’ ‘er dun. I can do several projects at once.

At the moment, I’m doing this article, compiling and editing the September LVAS Observer’s Challenge, editing a short story I’m submitting to the next Henderson Writer’s Group Anthology, and writing another chapter in the third book in the Meleena’s Adventures series.

The short story was something I came up with on a whim. In fact I think of those spur of the moment, just like these articles I write weekly.

How about you?

Happy writing!