“I get a crap writing day at least once a week. But I did find a blog post by writer Chuck Wendig about bad writing days : Even then, it doesn’t always come together.įinding other people talking about this (I would have assumed, fairly common) phenomenon is as elusive as finding Atwood’s Muse. In fact all the pieces can be there, but nothing’s quite fitting, and I have to continually bang them into place with a hammer. ![]() The ideas are still there, and maybe even the focus and inspiration. If “flow state” is that perfect conflation of idea, inspiration, magic, and focus, then “clogged state” is the not-quite opposite. The information is disorganized and all over the place. I can’t find the right words, so I stick placeholders in. Certainly, nothing that would be seen as writer’s block as most people call it. I’ll have the ideas, I’ll have the direction, and I’ll be typing at 1,000 words per hour like nothing’s wrong. I’ve had a lot of experience with creative block, even in my day job. It’s also handy to have something to blame when things aren’t clicking as they should.īut first, let’s define exactly what creative block is and why it’s not writer’s block. It’s a convenient way of describing where those creative ideas come from. For me, the Muses are metaphorical – not actual Greek goddesses of inspiration. Long-time readers know that I believe in the Muses myself. You may be wondering why I’m so obsessed with getting to the bottom of Atwood’s Muse. ![]() I guess that means The Handmaid’s Tale was all her – no Muses required… “It just has to do with poetry – that’s all.” However, what I found most interesting is that she doesn’t have (and/or doesn’t need) a Muse when she’s writing prose. There, she defined her Muse as “definitely female”, short and thin, extremely old (though getting younger), not someone she knows, and more of a voice and an image than a presence. I finally stumbled upon a recorded discussion she was part of in the mid-nineties at the University of British Columbia on Canada Day, 1983. That’s a pretty succinct definition for creativity!īut Atwood – normally forthcoming and open-bookish on most things writing – is frustratingly cagey on how Muses help her create order in her artistic world. In one famous prose poem, Let Us Now Praise Stupid Women, she refers to “The Muse as fluffball!” (Unsurprisingly, this line has many nuances when read in context with the rest of her poem, so I encourage you to search it out…) In another work of hers – an essay called MacEwen’s Muse about Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen – she relates how MacEwen views her (male) Muse’s function: the creator of order out of chaos. Margaret Atwood seems like the type of writer who would have a Muse, doesn’t she? In fact, when I tried to think of the famous writer most likely to have a Muse, she was the first person who popped into my head.Ītwood is certainly comfortable talking about Muses – at least in general terms.
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