While reading ‘Upending the Muse’ by Rick Bragg, you get the sense that He’s tring to relay the concept that Muse might be percieved as a tangible thing. Perhaps something you can grasp ahold of and carry around in your pocket until you need it. How can this be? Each person has their own inspiration and motivation for writing.

There is the distinct first impression that he’s thumbing his nose at conventional writing beliefs. Such as, (use your best stodgy old college professor voice in your head while you say this….) ‘Oh, you must have a certain place to write, or dress a certain way, behave in such a fashion to be a REAL writer…”. When in fact, he’s actually relaying the concept that you should be able to write whenever, and wherever the mood strikes you.

I am guilty of having fragments of story lines floating around in my head, and even the occational wildly inappropriate hiaku.  These bits of flotsum pester me until I get the meter of sylables rhymiing just so into the 5-7-5 rhythm. I quickly open up my note app on my iphone and text the memory to myself so I don’t forget.

These moments of inspiration are so mecurial. I suppose that is my muse in action. I’ve had many a great, poetic starts jumbling around my head. I tell myself, ‘OH! I’ll be sure to remember that!’, and of course, I never do. I’ve become obsessive about capturing these fast impulses of prose.

I can flick back to my very first note on my phone from 2009. In what seemed a lightning stroke of genius to me, I ‘jotted’ down ideas for series of poster designs I’d been working on. It reads like a shopping list for the insane – But it still serves it’s purpose.

There’s also a note hidden in there from a few years ago. It’s a record of a conversation I had with my often-times brilliant son. He was comforting me while I sat on the couch feeling miserable and pathetic with some sort of cold or ailment. We were talking about how I felt. It’s a silly conversation about sore throats and a jungle fungus living on a eukalalee. He inquired, “Did tree frogs come out of your nose?” I remember fondly that I laughed as loudly as I could with my raspy voice until I started coughing up what felt like tree frogs. I can clearly remember thinking at the time that this story would make a brilliant children’s book, Immediatly, it got typed into the notes. I’ve even gone as far as starting to sketch out some scenes for this concept. Even if it never gets published, I’ve done it for me. For my family.

You see, Muse can strike in nearly any environment and at any time. There’s no writing police that will arrest you if you don’t sit at a worn wooden desk using an old typwriter in a dusty attic while you pour out your story on paper. You simply have to take notes, get started and compile your thoughts in any way you want. The magic happens when you actually take those few minutes and jot down that idea on a napkin, a journal, text it, or email it to yourself. It’s the little momements of insight that can really lead the way to your own personal writing journey.