How do you imagine your Muse?
The creative process with a dose of Destiny's Child
Boulders and breadcrumbs left by other writers, artists, and thinkers litter our creative paths. While working on any long-term creative project, we encounter new and old ideas that stumble around in our brains, complimenting, hindering, or expanding whatever we’re working on. These are the books behind the books, the ideological worms that tunnel through your project. They can be like angels or demons. Sometimes it’s social discourse or current events that give rise to these new pathways, and other times synchronicities or algorithms force these meetings.
After finishing the book Turning Pro and watching the film Stutz recently, two concepts, The Muse and Mr. X, flex in my mind as I finish my current novel in progress, Acid Christmas, set to release in October 2023.
The Muse and Mr. X.
They are opposites.
Let me begin with The Muse(s) using the metaphor of Destiny’s Child.
The Muses
I’ve written about The Muses before, in my novel, Mushroom Honeymoon. The story features a psilohuasca ceremony hosted by an Aubrey-Marcus-type entrepreneur named Bāne Kama who engages real women to perform the role of the “Three Muses,” from ancient Greek mythology: Aoidē ("song" or "voice"), Meletē ("practice" or "occasion"), and Mnēmē ("memory"). In the Greek myth, these three Boeotian sisters were each responsible for different parts of the creative process. In my novel, they perform different psychedelic ceremonial roles.
When I say The Muse, singular, this is the three sisters in combination, like the R&B group Destiny’s Child. Each sister is necessary to the trio, to the creative process and product, but you may remember Beyoncé the best. Kelly Rowland is a close second. The third girl, well, I can’t even recall her name, but I’m sure she’s someone’s favorite member and I know her voice is also imperative. She’s crucial for making the trio balanced and functioning as an ensemble. The trio is like the muse sisters—voice, practice, and memory/impact.
You can favorite different Muses at different times. Together they equal—The Muse.
Let’s delve into each sister’s role in the creative process.
1. Aiodē
Aiodē is the initial idea or concept, the creative spark (your song, your book idea, maybe your entire novel, your painting, movie script, etc.)
Aoidē, the most exciting of all the muses for me and many artists, THE BEYONCÉ, sometimes gives you a complete thing, like my first book, Cactus Friends, which basically came to me fully formed, and in its entirety one day. Aiodē combined for me a vision from an ayahuasca ceremony and an experience from a micro-dose mushroom ceremony and these bloomed in one sitting into the entire plot of Cactus Friends, which I then outlined and wrote as a summary. While this isn’t my typical writing process, it worked for this book because of the Beyoncé level muse action I received.
Maybe this sounds very woo-woo to you and you may think I’ve been drinking too much ayahuasca, but to be honest, the writing of Cactus Friends was one of the most joyous experiences of my life because of this close dance with Aoidē.
Other times Aiodē, the spark muse, gives you only a tiny piece of a thing and, as author Donna Tartt put it, writing the novel becomes like painting a mural with an eyelash.
For example, my new novel, Acid Christmas, only arrived in my brain as one scene—a lusting, but heartbroken, beautiful female flight attendant without a winter jacket, stranded by an unexpected blizzard at the very crowded Toronto airport at Christmas. I didn’t know what else would happen. I wrote only from that moment.
This is where Aoidē’s sister, Meletē, comes into play.
2. Meletē
Meletē is the goddess or muse of practice, or what I think of as The Work. The Kelly Rowland. The pen to the page. The fingers to the keyboard, paint to the brush. Crunches. Reps. Not that the Beyoncé muse doesn’t require work, but Meletē is the muse that holds your hand during that work.
Meletē, the necessary but relentless muse, helps you transform the spark bestowed by Aioidē and harness it into a fiery, perhaps still-chaotic composition.
Without her, you won’t be able to sit down every day for weeks and months to figure out what happens next in your book/album/masterwork. She is your practice companion, your artistic body double, your cheerleader.
Julia Cameron, the author of The Artist’s Way, talks about needing Believing Mirrors, friends that push you along when the work gets rough, and only tell you positive things, this is like Meletē. Meletē the Relentless. Meletē the Persistent.
Meletē must constantly battle Mr. X. More on that later.
After Meletē is done, we end up with a rough project about as polished as soup.
Hello, Mnēmē.
3. Mnēmē
Mnēmē is the muse of contemplation and memory. She also goes by the name of Mnemosyne and she helps you analyze, refine, and edit your project, contemplate its strengths and weaknesses, increase its impact, broaden and universalize your work.
She finishes and completes things, then cuts their umbilical cords. Without her, there is no trinity or divinity or marketing plan. She is your philosopher’s stone. Maybe she even helps you with your project’s release strategy. She is the big picture caretaker that will refine your dumpster fire and package it into a marketable, cozy candle that can be shipped and sold in every Barne’s and Noble. She knows strategy. She isn’t a spark or a slave driver; she’s precision scissors.
Hello Mnēmē, are you out there? I need to finalize details, and I’m not great at marketing, please help!
This is the muse sister that most eludes me, Mnēmē. She is my weakest member, and like the third lady in Destiny’s Child, given my propensity to start and finish projects, but never share them, perhaps I ought to learn her name and make better friends with her… Ok, her name is Tenitra Michelle Williams. She sings gospel/inspirational music now. Pretty good.
The Trio = The Muse
So those are The Muses/The Muse. They come at different times. They support different cycles of the creative process:
Vision
Work
Release
They can repeat, fade, linger, or get totally lost. Sometimes they annoy you to death.
Aoidē is especially fickle, a real diva, and maybe has ADHD. Sometimes she’s a firehose and sometimes she’s a trickle or even a wet match that won’t light at all.
There are many ways to imagine them too, and artists and writers maintain their own visions and terms. I see them in different ways at different times.
Stephen Pressfield, the author of The War of Art, talks about The Muse extensively in his books and interviews and envisions her as a green-haired goddess.
Author Elizabeth Gilbert calls The Muses, Big Magic.
Philosopher Eckhart Tolle talks of entering “Deep Space,” which is where the muses reside.
I really imagine Aoidē as Beyonce.
Meletē for me has actually just become Kim K, all in beige, crossing her perfect, thin arms and infamously saying “Get your mother f#cking #ss up and work!” Over and over again.
Mnēmē is sometimes the crone-faced Margaret Atwood, hovering in a cloud of smoke, with thunder clouds for hair, telling me to exact and shave my disasterpiece into a trim-waisted political tract, as pointed as a silver needle, as searing as Serena Joy.
Or The Muse is Steven Pressfield himself, telling me to DESTROY RESISTANCE, a phrase he promotes in his book, The War of Art, and in Turning Pro, both of which I’ve read and highly recommend.
And then… there is Mr. X, as presented in Jonah Hill’s documentary film Stutz; I’ll write about him in my next post.
Now You
Do you consider yourself to have a muse? What form does your muse take? Do you have more than one?
Which member of Destiny’s Child do you relate to the most? Favorite?
Have you read any of Pressfield’s books?
Do you consider yourself to have a muse? Kina not really. See the next question for more detail!
What form does your muse take? Myself, I guess. Like a fictional version of myself. From the future. Who is remembering all these stories for me in what is my present. There may be more than one. Could be, like, a thousand—each one from a different world or time.
Which member of Destiny’s Child do you relate to the most? Beyoncé. I mean, of course 😅
Have you read any of Pressfield’s books? Nope. Not a word.
Charlotte. Wow. These are very keen observations and I know it's not very dignified of me, but I'm more than a little jealous of your writing ability. As far as I can see, you are level = EXPERT. I'm really glad that you wrote and shared this; I am truly inspired by it.