There must be a purpose when you write. It shouldn’t only be the topic that you wish to cover. Some of the best writing that I’ve encountered, whether my own or others, was a product of simply writing for a purpose besides covering one or more specific things. There are so many things that deserve writing about. So, it’s often hard for me to choose exactly what would be best suited for me to write about.
Until very recently, I wandered so much from topic to topic, never truly knowing where I was going. I just wanted to share what was on my mind and write as interestingly and well as I could. After a while, I just find my work so scattered. You could say I’m building a varied portfolio, but I see it as a terrible lack of focus.
This is why it’s important to have a muse, something or someone that inspires you to write with a particular purpose in mind. This means having some fixed something or someone to which you find yourself most comfortable writing towards. Think of it as writing a letter to someone that you greatly admire, or think of it as the one thing you want to know anything and everything about. To be fair, you could also have two muses: someone you greatly admire and something you want to know anything and everything about.
An inanimate muse is probably the easiest to acquire. But, I feel in some ways an inanimate muse (a something) can end up leaving you feeling stagnant. There’s often only so much you can say about any given something before you find yourself restating things. On the other hand, a personal muse, someone who you have a deep emotional connection with, with which you share certain things in common, is much more gratifying. Of course, if this personal muse leaves your life, or hurts you in some way, you can lose purpose in your writing altogether.
Writers become quite invested in their muses. Some writers, I feel, do not even know how to properly identify their muses, but it’s an important thing to know how to do. You can have multiple muses, of course, but it’s better to have only one or two so that you’re not spreading yourself too thin. I have had a wide variety of muses in my day, and many of them left me wanting.
It’s probably best that you don’t rest all of your creative inspiration on a single person. But, it’s important to know what your muse or muses are, as a muse is the greatest thing any artist, especially a writer, can have!
~ Amelia <3
