R. J. Kessler

I might be crucified for saying this, but here I go: I don’t believe in the muse.

According to Wikipedia, the Muses were goddesses that inspired creativity in the areas of literature, science, and art. These goddesses were thought to be the sources of knowledge and were necessary in order to create well.

Nowadays, as far as I know, the muse is just a personification for inspiration. When you feel inspired to write, that’s actually the muse within you, waiting to spill those precious words out onto paper.

Much to my surprise, the description that some writers (typically fanfiction writers and aspiring writers) give to their muse almost comes off as a sort of imaginary friend that comes and goes.

I don’t understand the idea of having a muse. Quite frankly, I think it’s a bunch of crap that writers use as an excuse when they’re too lazy or unmotivated to put their pens to parchment.

Here’s what Chuck Wendig from Terribleminds thinks on this topic:

The Muse is not real. Relying on the Muse is like leaning on a crutch made of playing cards. You are your own Muse.

Do you want to learn how to write when you’re not in the mood? Here’s the answer: sit your ass in that chair, place your fingers on the keyboard, and write. If you’d rather use a pen and notebook, that’s okay, too.

Quit waiting for inspiration.

Writing is not a glamorous profession where you sip on chai lattes until the muse within you sparks up and gives you the words you need to tell that story that’s been boiling in your mind for a decade.

As Dan Poynter once said:

If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer. You’re a waiter.

I love the punny implication there. If you sit around waiting for the muse, you’re eventually going to be waiting tables at your local Applebee’s restaurant because you sure as hell won’t be making a living off of those books you never wrote.

It’s time to buckle down and get into the nitty gritty. If you want your story to be actualized, you need to get to work.

“But I’m not in the mood,” you say. “My fingers won’t type,” you say. “I don’t feel like it right now,” you say.

That’s cool. But thirty years down the road, when you’re still stuck at that office job and still thinking about that cool novel that you should get around to writing, the rest of us will have a library full of stories that people out there will be enjoying.

So, again, how do you write when you’re not in the mood? Man up (or woman up), sit down, and power through by sheer determination and discipline.

Who cares if you’re not in the mood? Your readers don’t. Your publishers don’t. And your stories most definitely don’t. Nobody has time for your excuses, least of all you.

Get cracking.

Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft.

You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket.

The only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word.

There are no exceptions to this rule.

You think you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right–and breaking your train of thought and the writer’s trance in the bargain–or just spell it phonetically and correct it later.

Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere? And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and you find you don’t have it in your head, why not write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it… but later.

When you sit down to write, write. Don’t do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

– Stephen King

This is something that I always forget while writing. Not turning off your inner editor can cost you in productivity.

Without my inner editor, I can pump out upwards of 1,200 words an hour. With my inner editor turned on, that figure drops to 400.

So when you’re writing, write! Do nothing else! Most of the sentences you write will have to be torn apart later anyway, so don’t make them perfect. Not yet.

Have you ever seen Inception? That is one movie–not the only one, mind you—that really knows what it’s doing in terms of scene structure. Let me explain.

I’ve seen Inception twice. As much as I loved it the first time around, I fully expected to be bored and uninterested during my second viewing. After all, I’d already seen the film and had already thought through all of the mind-bending implications of the ending.

Yet strangely, I found myself just as mesmerized. Once the movie started, I couldn’t tear myself away from it. Not a single moment allowed me to relax, instead grabbing me by the lapels and dragging me along for the ride. Again.

It all has to do with scene purpose, and the writers of Inception have it mastered.

There are interesting scenes and there are boring scenes. Your job, as a writer, is to make all of your scenes interesting. Boring scenes will make your readers yawn, or skip the scene, or put down your book altogether.

And you definitely don’t want that.

Now, just to clarify: I don’t mean that every single one of your scenes has to be action-packed. In fact, action isn’t a prerequisite for interest. Your story might be void of guns, explosions, blood, and death yet still be a captivating force of storytelling.

How do you keep your scenes from being boring? One word: conflict.

Every single one of your scenes needs to have conflict, because conflict creates dramatic tension, and dramatic tension is what keeps your reader glued to the page.

How do you create and maintain conflict? By giving your viewpoint character a goal to be achieved and an antagonistic force that keeps him from achieving that goal.

For example, Anne barges into a saloon after being lost in the desert for 2 days. She desperately needs water, but the saloon keeper doesn’t like her kind. No water for her.

The goal? She wants a glass of water. The conflict? The keeper won’t give it to her.

Dramatic tension. Now your reader wants to know if Anne will ever get that glass of water. How is she going to get what she wants? What is she going to do if she can’t get it?

If you don’t want your readers to grow bored, make sure every scene has a goal. It doesn’t have to be a blatantly obvious goal—subtlety can work. But a scene without a goal will ultimately do nothing more than meander aimlessly… and that’s boring.