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Starting anything new is hard. You need a surge of energy to boot up your computer, start your car, or sit down and start writing. But oh how Brenda the anti-muse can distract!
Resistance is the bugaboo of creative activity. Resistance is seductive. She is the anti-muse. She saps your vital energy. She convinces me I need that cup of tea before getting down to it. And surely, it won’t hurt to check my email? And, look at this interesting article!
At this point I am lost. My morning writing time has turned into the lethargic afternoon. My brain is fuzzy and starving for serotonin. At least that’s what I think the brain-box is starving for. Neurotransmitters aren’t really my bailiwick.
Personal coaches sometimes call Resistance the Gremlin, that horned creature that sits on you shoulder gargoyle-like and tells you not to bother. I think of Resistance as Brenda the anti-muse, although for some reason this strange name Thelxepeia keeps coming to mind. Each of us should get to know our own Resistance.
Brenda is scruffy (earthy some would say) and likes to wear fishnet stockings and blood-red lipstick. She can always think of something else I should be doing instead of writing. It’s that word “just.” Be aware of it. Oh, I’ll just have a piece of chocolate before starting I hear myself thinking. But I know that’s Brenda at work. I’ll just get the mail and then I’m really, really going to start. Does this sound familiar?
Everything is easy to people who don’t have to do it themselves. Could you just revise the ending of that story? Could you just move this building a little to the left? It all sounds too easy. Watch out for just.
When I resist resistance, Brenda renews her effort. She elbows me in the ribs and says, “Go on, enjoy yourself. You only live once.” If I continue to focus, she becomes petulant. I have to admit, she has a certain allure when she gets all pouty, but she’s no good for me. I don’t need distractions. I need focus.
I need my muse. Brenda can be quite a handful. Ignore her for long and she gets insulting. I don’t know where she learned to swear like that! And, I hate that bubblegum habit. But seduction doesn’t work by tantrum. By the time Brenda is in a full-blown tizzy, she knows she’s lost and storms out.
Odysseus manfully strapped himself to the mast of his ship. He blocked his ears with wax to drown out the sound of the mellifluous sirens. I don’t want to be shipwrecked on the rocks of inertia.
I do feel sorry for Brenda though. I’ve always thought she was somebody else’s muse once and whomever she belonged to probably ignored her. Ignoring your muse is a bad idea. One sure way to ignore her is to rush about being busy all the time. Ignore your muse at your peril because Hell hath
no fury like a muse ignored.
Recently I have an inkling of why my muse (who, right now, is content to sit on the arm of my sofa twisting a ringlet of her hair with her finger) never shows up when Brenda is around. Could they be one and the same: like the double-facing Janus, or YinYang, or Shiva Shakti?
This leads me to the uncomfortable thought that Brenda may not have been someone else’s muse. Was I was guilty of not slowing down enough to discover my muse quietly whispering in my ear, and all I had to do was shut up and listen to what she had to say?
Of course, shutting up and listening to what a woman has to say is what every wise man eventually learns.
What I do know about my muse is that she likes the quiet of the early morning: that crepuscular state between dreaming and waking she lies in bed with me whispering in my ear. Her generosity is boundless. She speaks to me in eloquent sentences which she freely gives me to write as my own.
But on grasping for the Moleskine notebook beside my bed most of her whispers vanishes like a desert mirage. I feel her slipping away from me as the cold light of dawn brings with it its mind-numbing banality of taskiness. I am left only with a few images, thoughts, and ideas like playing cards from some long-forgotten suit.
Creativity is not about thinking things up, but getting things down as I read somewhere recently. Just a few jottings can help.
“Yes, Brenda you look marvelous in that new leather jacket. Pizza you say? Yes I’m coming now. No, you’re not disturbing me.”
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