So, you want to be a writer, and you have a great idea for a novel. You’ve written three or four chapters and the muse, or the motivation, has disappeared. Then, you find yourself waiting for the muse to return. You can feel it, but it’s just out of reach, and you can’t grab it.
Here’s the secret to finding the muse again. Stop waiting for the muse to write your novel. It’s the grind that gets the job finished.
If you’re waiting for the muse to return, you’ll wait a long time. You have to write and grind it out. Muse means absorbed in thought, but over time, it has come to mean inspiration. That’s all it is, an inspirational idea you can’t forget. The muse has done its job, now you have to do the rest. It’s time to grind it out, to do the trench work that’s not always clean or pretty.
If your story is going in the right direction, you will feel it, and flashes of muse will return to help you find your way. Especially when you see flashes of scenes that occur later in your novel. Write these scenes down so you don’t forget them.
In my experience, my novels have been ten to fifteen percent muse and eighty-five to ninety percent grind. The muse is an idea, or a vision. The muse is motivation, but it’s the grind that gets the novel finished.
Grind it out!
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