When does your muse ?

[Steven Hunley]

When does your muse strike?

For me it's in the shower or during a walk I've taken many times before. But that's just me. For me it has to be some kind of repetitive activity that requires almost no thought, and that's when I get many of my ideas for plots or details for stories. Not all of the time, naturally. But if I get famous and have to write for a living, I'll most likely be the cleanest author the world has ever known.

Stevenson got his idea for Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde after waking from a bad dream. So when does your muse strike? What does it take? A bottle of cheap wine? An expensive doobie of Purple Kush the size of the Hindenburg? Sixteen cups of coffee?

Tell us where or when you get your best ideas, and fear not, your modus operandi will remain secret. (sure, why not, it's all over the world on the internet)

[cacian]

I have not got a muse but I could say that I am the muse. Everything I write or don't for that matter is either from a brisk walk doing the washing or just typing the first word that comes to mind.
I sometime hear the first line in my head and so I follow it and there and then. It is as simple as that.

[MeLiKeyClaSsIcS]

My muse usually strikes when I've just watched a fantastic movie, read a great book or essay, or after a great night out with my two best friends. I've always written my best work after any of the aforementioned activities.

[hillwalker]

Without a doubt mine strikes whenever a simple idea takes on a life of its own. She keeps me lying awake all night long as my subconscious creates the first draft. Then it's a case of scribbling down notes while the story's fresh in my mind and getting a rough copy down onscreen the following morning after the first cup of coffee.
I'm working on just such an idea now after hearing 'Ode to Billy Joe' last night and wondering just what was it he and the narrator threw off the Tallahatchee Bridge.

H

[Alexander III]

My muse usually strikes when I've just watched a fantastic movie, read a great book or essay, or after a great night out with my two best friends. I've always written my best work after any of the aforementioned activities.

I agree, personally my muse strikes out of a sense of competition and jealousy, when it witnesses great art is becomes envious and desires to outrun the fastest and that is when I truly think.

[Steven Hunley]

I agree, personally my muse strikes out of a sense of competition and jealousy, when it witnesses great art is becomes envious and desires to outrun the fastest and that is when I truly think.

This I find fascinating. Again for me, the process is often started as a response to art too. Poetry and songs (just another form of poetry set to music) are sooo provocative, as are other forms like short stories, novels and most any visual arts. Ode to a Grecian Urn and Ozymandias are good examples. I suppose Alexander Dumas was right when he said, "Art begets art."

I can see from these responses that a number of Muses are set off by a wide spectrum of sources. We show variety in our creative triggers.

But in the shower I can't avoid working on stories, it's a usual as getting soap in my eyes.

[AuntShecky]

I don't have a muse. As a matter of fact, the minute all nine of them found out I couldn't fork over the commission, they said, "Fifteen percent of nothin' is nothin'." Then they all left. (But not in a huff. I think they took a cab.)

[islandclimber]

I don't have a muse. As a matter of fact, the minute all nine of them found out I couldn't fork over the commission, they said, "Fifteen percent of nothin' is nothin'." Then they all left. (But not in a huff. I think they took a cab.)

Did you, at the very least, help them with cab fare?

[Delta40]

Anytime. Everydayness is interesting. Reading often throws me into manic space. I just read Kafka's Metamorphosis and I'm covered in slime when I consider the psychological transformation of characters in my own project.