Why I Don’t Speak Cello

On Tuesday morning, a cello sat on the sidewalk outside my house. I considered engaging in a musical conversation, but instead rushed off to work.

On Wednesday morning, the sidewalk looked up at me with empty eyes.

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I have a confession to make. Lately, I haven’t been practicing what I preach on this blog. Circumstances in my life at the moment have had me working long hours six or seven days a week, every week, for a while. Life has been particularly stressful. And I haven’t been maintaining a creative practice.

This blog itself does give me a bit of an outlet. But I haven’t devoted any time at all to what I call my soul-writing. The fragments of fiction and poetry, the phrases of metaphor and memory my Muse hands to me. Moments of creativity that may become pieces of a larger project or may just feed my deepest self by merely existing.

But this past weekend, I didn’t work at all, taking two days in a row off for the first time in quite a while. And guess what happened? My Muse took the opportunity to begin nudging me. Or maybe he’s been nudging me all along, and I just haven’t been listening. At any rate, a couple of metaphorical micro-stories flowed into my mind. And once I started writing them down, more arrived.

Perhaps not surprisingly, they all speak to issues of creativity and writing. I’ve shared one above, and I plan to continue sharing them and write about the issue each describes. ”Why I Don’t Speak Cello” illustrates my current period of overworked stress. Something extraordinary sits on the periphery of my life, and I’ve been refusing to engage with it. Creativity is always extraordinary, you know.

My life hasn’t slowed down, in spite of the fact that I actually had a real weekend. And my stress level remains high. But this little story my Muse handed me reminds me that I can still take 15 minutes to talk to the cello before I rush to work.

15 minutes a day. That’s how you learn to speak cello—or become a writer, or maintain a creative practice—no matter how much crazy life throws at you.

And if you do ignore the cello until it disappears, just remember to stop and talk to the timpani and the trombone when they arrive.

Are You the Genius, or Is the Genius Working Through You?

I don’t share videos often, because I know many of us don’t have time to watch them. But this talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, touches on some fascinating ideas about the origin of creativity. Gilbert discusses the concept of the individual as a creative genius versus the notion of the artist as a conduit through which creativity flows. She links the end of the historical belief in an outside “daemon” or “genius” to the growth of both narcissism and paralyzing self-doubt in contemporary writers.

Highlights for me include her interactions with poet Ruth Stone and musician Tom Waits. Stone told Gilbert about poems barreling down on her while she races to get a piece of paper, only to continue on to be written by another poet if Stone doesn’t catch them in time. Waits shared a significant moment in his creative life with Gilbert, discussing his interaction with a piece of music when it came to him while he was driving down the freeway and unable to capture it.

The video is just under 20 minutes long—well worth a listen if you have the time.

10 Ways to Woo Your Muse

1. Do something you haven’t done since you were a child. Slide down a slide.  Eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Play in a sprinkler. Sing a song you liked when you were a kid.
2. Keep a notebook next to your bed, and write about whatever wakes you up.
3. Take a little time to stop “doing” and just “be” for a while.  Meditate. Walk. Stare at the wall. Soak in a bubble bath.



4. Spend some time doing anything you consider fun, even if it seems frivolous. Especially if it seems frivolous.
5. Go for a walk and look at everything in your path as if you’re seeing it for the first time.
6. Do something creative. Color. Dance. Play with Play-Doh.
7. Pay attention to your dreams—both the night kind and the day kind.
8. Rip up your To Do list for the day or for the afternoon and do whatever you feel like doing.
9. Go outside at night and count the stars. Or waltz in the rain. Or share your secrets with the moon.
10. Do something silly. Talk in a funny voice. Walk down the street backwards.  See if you can balance a spoon on your nose.

Paddle Surfer Wisdom

Last week on Kauai, my husband met a weathered paddle surfer who claims a he’e (octopus) helps him navigate the sometimes treacherous ocean waters.   I love stories like this. Whether you believe it literally, or enjoy it as a colorful myth, the paddle surfer’s story also makes a wonderful metaphor.

I’ve spent a lot of time here talking about my Muse.  But now I’m thinking about how the inspirational muse and the navigational octopus could work together in the creative process.

My Muse feels like an ethereal guest.  He’s pouty, he has ADD and he owns a perpetually broken watch.  Though he drives me crazy, his dynamic personality and vivid tales color the room with brilliant imagery when he chooses to visit.

But do I have a creative he’e?  And if so, what purpose does she serve?

I imagine an ancient and wise creature living in the deep waters of my subconscious. Always there, silently watching.  Hers is the voice that bubbles up when I berate myself for not working on one of my unfinished novels.  That quietly whispers in my ear:  “No, Sandy.  You’re supposed to be writing about creativity now.”

My he’e knows which current flows smoothly in the direction I’m headed.  She nudges me away from the dangerous undertow that threatens to sweep me far from my center.  But this insightful octopus speaks softly, watching as I often do the exact opposite of what she’s suggested.

“The animals know things,” the paddle surfer told my husband.  “You just have to listen to them.”

I’d like to believe we all have a creative creature residing in our deep waters and steering us in the right direction.  It’s the voice you hear in those small moments when you stop listening to all the other noise in your head. When you stop thinking and stop doing and allow yourself to simply be.

I’m going to work on tapping into the muse’s amazing bursts of inspiration while still hearing the quiet wisdom of the he’e.  I can imagine that doing this consistently could make it possible to reach amazing creative heights.

Write Naked!

Okay, I know I gave this post a provocative title.  Provocative, but not misleading, because I’m going to talk about writing while in the shower—and presumably naked.

In my post Friday, I mentioned dragging my Muse into the shower to sneak in a creative moment. Writing in the shower came up in the comments to that post, too. Since it was on my mind, I did a little Internet research about shower writing. And I found products!

I’ve always written in my head in the shower, repeating a few sentences over and over until I’m finished so I won’t forget them. It never occurred to me to actually physically write in the shower. But apparently it occurred to other people, because you can buy the items below to help with your shower-time creativity.

Links to Shower Writing Tools:

Erasable Shower Note Tablet: Like a small whiteboard, with waterproof crayons, a crayon caddy and suction cup mounts included. (Looks like they’re out of stock at the time of this writing.)

AquaNotes: A pad of waterproof paper with suction cups to attach it to the shower wall. Comes with a water-resistant cedar pencil and a suction cup pencil holder. You can buy the regular AquaNotes or the “LoveNotes” to leave a message for that special someone in the shower!

Underwater Dive Slate: A search for “dive slate” turns up dozens of different dive slates made for scuba divers. But they’ll work fine in the shower, too.

These are products designed for construction professionals who need to take notes in all sorts of weather:

Waterproof Bound Book

Waterproof Notepad

All-Weather Pen: A ballpoint pen that “writes on wet paper, and upside down in temperatures from -50 to 400°F.” I think at 400°F, the pen might be fine, but the writer would have melted into a puddle!

I also saw advice to use kids’ washable crayons or old-fashioned grease pencils to write on tile shower walls. I think I’m going to try out the AquaNotes. And I didn’t even know waterproof paper existed until yesterday!

Write. Rinse. Repeat.

Sometimes when life overwhelms me, I’ve just gotta drag my Muse into the shower to sneak in a creative moment.  I’ve crafted some of my best paragraphs while showering, repeating them over and over in my head as I rinse off.  Then dashing, dripping wet, to the closest piece of paper I can find and recording my words before I forget them.

I’ve also forced my Muse to tag along on my morning commute in the past.  One sultry morning years ago, I began writing in my head while jammed up against dozens of commuters.  My bangs started melting into my eyes from the humidity of the combined body heat in the subway car. I used my realization that I desperately needed a haircut to come up with a metaphor for this micro-story titled “Denial”.

A British publication paid me ₤10 for those two sentences!  Though I’m not always sure if that payment provided adequate compensation for the pitying looks I’ve gotten on occasion from people who read the tiny story.  It is fiction, really.

I’ve been thinking about these captured moments of creativity, and I decided to come up with a list.  Tiny bits of time we overworked, stressed-out writers (that’s all of us, right?!) could used to craft a few sentences in our heads.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

• In the shower
• While driving or riding a bus/subway/taxi
• While washing/clearing dishes
• While vacuuming or dusting
• While folding laundry
• During commercials (30-second creative bursts!)
• While blowdrying your hair
• While walking the dog
• While grooming the dog/cat
• While grooming yourself
• While tweezing (this one depends on how much unwanted hair you have!)

If anyone has other ideas or has found unique moments in your life when you can write a sentence or two, please share them in the comments!

Memo to My Muse

Last Thursday morning, my Muse woke me a full two hours before I normally get up to make an announcement: “You WILL write this. NOW.”

A couple of phrases floated through my mind, a barely formed thought. But as my Muse continued poking my shoulder while I swatted him away and tried to go back to sleep, more words kept popping into my head. The idea began to come together.

I rubbed my eyes and grabbed the notebook and pen I keep on my bedside table. I began to realize I was inside the head of one of my protagonists, feeling her angst over a failing relationship.

So I went to the living room and scribbled this:

I reach out for you, but find myself grabbing empty handfuls of air. Your words, which used to flow around me like the comforting water of a familiar brook, have become drips from a leaky faucet. I can’t decide whether to keep banging on the tap, trying to force it open, or to fix the leak and silence it forever. My desire to drink deeply straight from your lips never ceases. But for now, I can only hold my parched tongue under the faucet. I carefully catch each and every unsatisfying drop as it falls.

The poetic style of this piece differs from the lighter tone of the story my unhappy protagonist inhabits. So it won’t wind up as part of her written tale. But I understand her better because of writing this. And it became a nice little piece of its own, even making an appearance here at Six Sentences.

I recently discovered Six Sentences, dedicated to stories told in—you guessed it—six sentences. I’ve enjoyed reading the work there, diverse pieces with quality writing. I briefly considered trying to write something for them. Then I filed that thought in the back of my mind: behind work, this blog and wondering what’s on TV tonight. But I must have unintentionally sent a memo to my Muse. Because the piece he woke me to write turned out to be exactly six sentences.

What an amazing thing a Muse is! Or creative inspiration, or the subconscious mind or whatever you prefer to call it. I woke to write, almost fully formed, a piece that both fits into this 6-sentence structure and gives me insight into one of my characters!

My paltry role in the creative process consisted of actually getting up and taking dictation from my Muse. Not a small feat for a slight insomniac who loves to sleep in! Then I suffered through a sleepy day because of the early wake-up. A positive tradeoff: a little drowsy grumpiness for a moment of creative inspiration.

Now that I read my 6-sentence piece again, I realize it could be about me and my Muse and our sometimes fractured relationship.

Hmmmm…

Maybe my Muse was the one sending a memo to me…

My Muse Strangles Me

I have a confession to make.

My Muse is verbally abusive.

I’m not a victim, though, because I created him that way.  Yes, him.  If creative men throughout the years could become inspired by their vision of a beautiful, ethereal woman hovering over their shoulder as they wrote, painted, composed and otherwise created magnificent things, I don’t see why I can’t have a hot guy hovering over mine.  But I actually didn’t create my hot, verbally abusive Muse for the fantasy eye candy factor, anyway.  At the time I called him up, I was in desperate need of some male energy in my writing life.

This was more than a decade ago, as I floated through a period of writing dreamy, sensual, surreal fictional sequences that went on forever.  I can’t call them stories, because they never ended.  Lots of lengthy sentences.  Gorgeous descriptions bursting with colors and textures and fragrances.  I knew how to write.  I could write until the cows came home.  But I needed structure.  I needed closure.  I needed endings.

At the same time, I worked lengthy hours at an architecture firm, the only job I’ve ever had that had absolutely nothing to do with writing.  Maybe the fact that I spent a lot of time dealing with contractors—a testosterone-filled bunch if ever I’ve seen one—had some influence on my Muse as he appeared to me.

Desperate to make writing a bigger part of my life, I decided to start getting up at 5 AM to sneak in an hour or two of writing before work.

Did I mention I’m not a morning person?!

Waking at 5 AM when I was already exhausted by a full life and an unfulfilling job proved to be quite a challenge.  I needed a cross between a take-no-prisoners drill sergeant and a thoroughly enticing lover to pry me out of bed that early.

That’s when I called on my Muse.

Make no mistake, I created him.  But he also came alive and participated in his own creation.  I don’t know how anyone else experiences a personal muse, but mine is like a divine artistic guide crossed with an imaginary friend.  At any rate, he came to me as I needed him then: seductive, and yes, verbally abusive.

Every morning when my alarm rang at 5 AM, my Muse began yelling in my ear: “Get the #@*% up, Sandy. Do you think your #@*%ing stories are going to write themselves?!?!!”

He wouldn’t let me roll over for five minutes; he yelled and yelled until I jumped up.  But once I sat in my favorite writing spot in the living room bay window with a cup of tea and a notebook in my lap, my Muse started purring sweetly in my ear, encouraging the words that flowed from my pen.

And thus began a lengthy and fertile creative period in my life, a time when my writing matured and I finally, happily, mastered endings.

It’s been a long time since those days, and my writing technique has continued to grow and evolve, but my Muse still hangs around.  I don’t get up at 5 AM any more, and he doesn’t yell at me any more either.  Instead we’ve settled into a comfortable relationship.  At times, he’s absent for months.  At other times I feel him hovering over my shoulder when I write, and now and then he even shows up in my dreams.

But though he’s still present, my Muse lives primarily above the garage in the back of my mind these days, and I’m realizing now as I consider my desire for sustained creativity in my life that it’s time to allow him a bigger role again.  A reinvented role, because I don’t need the drill sergeant now as much as I need the lover.

Okay, maybe I still need a little drill sergeant for those days when I just don’t feel like being creative and I want to hide behind my work and other responsibilities and whine about how I have no time for my soul-writing.  But I don’t think I need the yelling any more.

I’m almost sure I don’t need the yelling any more…