Story of a Tough Love Muse
One of the things about being a creative person is that you surround yourself with creative friends. Or, at least, this is something I was lucky enough to do. Writers and artists and storytellers, each and every one. An elite class of intelligent, talented people.
One day, back in the spring of 2002, I realized something about my friends. Many of us were writers and artists, or wanted to be. And almost none of us, particularly the writers, were actually creating anything. We'd all like to write 'one day', but none of us were making that day today.
I started to wonder what the problem was. I knew these people around me were talented. I could see it in every conversation we had, in every e-mail they wrote. So why weren't they creating? What got them believing that they couldn't do it today, or that they were too tired, or that it wasn't worth the trouble of starting? When did writing, or drawing, or whatever become a chore to them? And more importantly, Why?
I decided to do something about it. I would host a party. A creativity party. I would get people together and do mad libs, run some creativity exercises, get them to look at a picture and make up a story about it. It would be a place where we could get together and just have fun making stuff up.
Everyone thought it would be a great idea. In the summer of 2002, I had the first creativity party. People loved it. People hated it. They moaned and groaned when I made them write poetry. Poetry! It's so difficult! It was painful.
It was wonderful. They asked me when the next party was.
In October of 2002, I discovered something called National Novel Writing Month, a challenge where you write a novel during the month of November. You have 30 days to write 50,000 words. It's insane. It's hectic. It's time-consuming. I invited all of my friends to participate. No, I challenged them to participate. Some couldn't. Some did. And we had a great time.
Not everyone finished their novel in November. Some people created for a month solid, then just let things slide. They intended to finish, really they did, but life started getting in the way. I started asking people what they were up to. Had they finished their novel? What were they working on now? They learned that they could write in November. Were they keeping it up?
One of my friends jokingly referred to me as his Tough Love Muse. I loved it instantly and started to use it myself. I also started to take my "work" as a muse much more seriously.
I have a book now. I write down who I need to bug about what and when. Mostly, I follow it. People know that if they tell me they're going to write something, it's likely they'll be getting a phone call from me to see if they've done it. I don't punish people if they haven't completed their goals. I like to think I don't nag. I just let them know that it matters if they finish. That there's at least one person out there who cares if they let themselves down by not creating.
That's important to note: they're not letting me down. They're letting themselves down. I just make them aware of it. And I tell them that it has to stop.
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