I'm not sure how many of you have seen Elizabeth Gilbert talking about creative genius, but I saw it a while back and didn't comment, and one of the guys at work brought it to my attention again tonight on Twitter, so I guess I want to hash out my own thoughts on it and find out what you all think, since most of you are my first port of call when it comes to writing feedback and assistance.

So. I have a problem with the idea that a Muse is responsible for a person's creativity. That's the short version.

I want to pause here and say that I completely sympathise with Elizabeth Gilbert and everyone else who is treated like a suicide in waiting because they are creative. That, too, is ridiculous - but it's a rant for another day.

This rant is about Muses.

I think they are bullshit.

No one lives in my head, you see. I use the script shorthand to depict 'conversations' between myself and my characters, or my characters themselves, but this is because I possess an imagination and a sound knowledge of their personalities, not because they actually lounge about my skull waiting to be put to use.

(If this were the case, Hiru would have filled my skull with baubles, lace, and perfume to the point where I would not need earrings because shiny crap would spill from my ears like from the lips of the kind sister with the water pitcher.)

The idea of the Muse or the Genius is, to me, a way of avoiding responsibility for your failure to create. I couldn't do it, but it's not my fault because I am a tragic starving artist and my Muse did not appear. I did it, and it took hours and bottles of wine, but it is complete and it was nothing but pure driven joy and exhaustion because my Muse came and rode me etc. let's cut this example off before it dashes away into Sanga territory.

When I cannot write things, it is usually for one reason: I am not focusing hard enough.

Lack of focus happens for a few reasons, but the most common reason is that I have this strange idea that I need a certain amount of time to write. (This is crap, because I know I can write quite wonderfully in very tightly-timed situations if required.) So if I don't think I have enough time from the outset, I fritter it away. (And, as today, if I do have plenty of time, I think, "Excellent — while I have the time, I should do these eight other trivial things that have been waiting on time, too.")

Lack of focus brought about by lack of dedication - i.e. because writing is not, in action, the number one thing in my life. At present, the number one thing in my life is The Internet, and Wasting Time Thereupon, which is closely followed by Avoiding Being Yelled At Because I Have Neglected Other People's Most Important Things.

When you fail at a creative endeavour, it's usually because you're not approaching it correctly, and 'correctly' here means many things. We all work in different ways. My mother could not concentrate to music if you gave her money or threatened that everything she loved be subjected to a napalm bath. I cannot concentrate when people can see what I'm doing unless I convince myself that no one is paying me the slightest attention. It's a great failing in a cube farm worker. But that is what strategies are for.

Strategies for teasing out that creative process. Strategies that let you coax the creativity into being (or the performance anxiety to a nice sedative and a nap against the wall).

I am still trying to work out exactly what triggers my most effective creative focus, and I imagine I will go on attempting to do so until I die an old woman among my sixteen haughty cats.

But the fact is that I know when I'm being lazy or not being dedicated enough, and I know that there's a balance to be struck between what I think is important and what other people think is important enough to kneecap me or stop talking to me over, and I know that when I am good, I am very, very good, and the Muses have fuck-all to do with it.



So that's the rant. I'd appreciate slightly saner commentary, since we all know how I get when I'm excited. I want to know what your creativity-inducing triggers are.

Triggers:
MUSIC → Must be regular of beat, remain within a certain pitch range, and connect in some way with the tone of what I am writing. This is why my playlist for The Conductor is more successful in getting me to work than any other playlist — it's very flat and straightforward, which fits Ash's mentality very well.
SOLITUDE → If pressed, I can write with people around, but particularly for story-writing, I have to be in a corner where I can see everyone and no one can be reading over my shoulder. Music comes in here, too, since it helps isolate my brain from whatever is going on around me.
NIGHT → No matter what I try to do with my schedule, I always write my best between 10pm and 2am. I have done, and am doing, my best to alter this, but my head works better at night, probably because at night I feel like I'm just dicking about with words and there's no pressure.
PRESSURE → Conversely, pressure helps because it means that the writing (or other creative endeavour) is the most important thing around. Nothing tops it, therefore nothing has the right to encroach on your focus upon it.
COLD FEET → No, seriously. I find it difficult to write when I have warm feet. They give me an uncomfortableness.
TEA → Not that I can't write without it, but that I have made tea a ritual that lets me focus on my work: I make it, bring it back to my desk, and get in a good five or ten minutes of intense concentration before it's of a drinkable temperature. (And then, if I'm lucky, forget all about it because I'm concentrating too hard on what I'm doing to be concerned with things like tea. Pfah!)
WRITING → Writing this rant helped me focus, because I was trying to prove a point. Perhaps I should make a point of writing semi-structured mini-essays before I sit down to write for AtM et al! We'll see if I can come up with a list of topics to rant about. Let me know if you have any ideas, eh?

That's all I can think of at present. Come and chatter with me, o flist, and yea, also you lurkers of the night. I am less aggressive than the rant would have you believe, especially now that it is 11.22pm and I am kind of tired and cold and ranted out.

[EDIT] And on this note, I want to replace this icon, since it does not actually reflect my views. I'd rather go with sometimes my brain is doing things I don't even know about, because that is certainly truer than I'm just the writer.