Expect Your Muse: 10 Lessons for Living

from a Year of Writing

*Expect Your Muse:

Waiting for a winged whisper of inspiration is a sort of magic. Living in general expectation of
inspiration is pleasurable, mysterious, and playful. It’s like partnering with a benevolent
unknown who, reliably yet unexpectedly, flutters up with a gracious blessing that feels a little
like an urgent summons!

*Just Begin:
In order to “just begin” anything easily procrastinated, I suggest spontaneously “borrowing time”
(standing at the kitchen counter works for me) from other tasks like getting ready for work,
washing dishes, cooking dinner, going to bed, sleeping. If you do that, the potentially
overwhelming task doesn’t feel like it will swallow you up, get you lost; the stakes are lowered.
Setting aside hours for sitting down can feel daunting, threatening, and lead to avoidance. While
I’m standing here … before I … let me just begin … just a little
*Get to Know Your Process:
Getting to know your process, especially when it can unfold without a big hurry or much
pressure, is a wonderful kind of friendship with yourself that’s gracious, affirming, and
interesting. It’s also just more effective to work with instead of against your own nature and
wiring, absolving yourself of shoulds, comparisons, excessive critiques, and trusting how YOU
do what you do.

*Stay with It:

We could all get a medal for “staying with” what we can’t fully control. Whether parenting,
aging, teaching, care giving, therapy, writing, creating, getting a degree, trying something new,
facing change, healing, “staying with it” can be an act of faith and love. It implies a stubborn
openness to possibility, authentic interest in a good outcome, and hope.

*Guard Your Intuition:

Trusting what we can’t prove but just know requires some self respect and just a little pride.
Remember, no one has to know what you just know unless they are a trusted keeper of such
knowledge. Some things are too big or too tender to explain. There’s time for sharing and time
for keeping; the comments/opinions of others can daunt your fragile sense, vision, idea. Guard
your intuition until it’s colored in, folded neatly, and sturdy enough for a safe release.

*Default to Curiosity:
Curiosity, unlike judgement, engages a realm that’s playful and spacious. When we dwell and
continue to return there, we can stay aligned with possibility and shed some frustration and
pressure. Furthermore, curiosity’s not just about asking questions, but is also about living with
our senses attuned — casually and with ease — to revelation.

*Embrace Editing:
Editing is a kind of deep attention that perpetually shapes its subject toward resonance and
beauty. Editing is an act of care, interest, finely tuned listening. It’s also an unsentimental state of
malleability and liberation in which almost any preference or attachment, no matter how tightly
we’ve clung to and defended it, can eventually get reworked, transformed, replaced …
irrevocably cut.

*Wrestle All the Way:

A lot of things, like writing, seem easy until I try them. I feel like I’ll just be able to do it, to
export what’s inside. But the process is uglier and more like wrestling all the way. My wrestling
generates vital energy though, which helps power a meaningful life. And this sort of wrestling
lacks a winner. I just walk away again and again with my facade diminished, my mind less
cloistered, and hint of shadow — lovely and dark, bearing hidden wisdom — more exposed.

*Ask Your Mother About the Commas:

But don’t let her grade it with a red pen. And remember, you’re not seeking overall approval of
your work, just answers regarding punctuation. There’s quite a difference, especially when
approval seeking is tempting.

In life, work, creating … turning to trusted guides who know what they’re talking about is really
important. There’s much that we just cannot see for ourselves. However, relying on others for
specific help and guidance, but not general assurance of our own or our product’s worth and
value, is a good idea and, for me, a very liberating privilege of low-stakes mid-40’s creativity.

*Share If … :
Putting ourselves out into the world in any form exposes us to criticism and praise, which are
basically the same thing. Sometimes sharing is simply unwise, but when the time is right sharing
is satisfying and empowering — a tiny rage against the END. We’re fortunate to arrive at a point
when risking judgement just doesn’t matter so much, but instead being able, willing to cast the
net of self outward and touch down a little deeper into something true.
Humorously, I think that sharing’s most basic purpose is to communicate the profound and
existential message carved by an unknown author into my sixth grade Central School classroom
desk:
“I - WAS - HERE.”

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