MUSE PROTECT ME

Who could look at this print title and not want it – "Muse, Protect Me." Anyone who has any interest or makes any effort, even accidental, at creating anything (words, pictures, other dimension) should receive this print FOR FREE!

Yes, I know she looks unfriendly. Isn’t that how we regard our personal muses? Critical, judgmental, only intermittently available like our parent of origin…blah blah blah, years of therapy, we know.

But, MUSE. That word alone should inspire, excite, INCITE, make us want to do fun stuff with crayons, paints, pens, a keyboard…whatever tool we grab to express ourselves.

DEAR MUSE:

(I’m concentrating hard on this message…)
Please help me stay focused this year to complete a book. I think it will be one I started a couple of years ago, you know the yin & yang on that (topic and motivation), which doesn’t matter, what matters is FINISHING. Maybe a Muse doesn’t help with selling, publishing, marketing, but I am hoping you can – counting on you to – help me finish the damn thing. With reduced anxiety and perfectionism. THINK YOU CAN DO THAT?!

I know how to write, I know how to work, how to create, get up and apply myself, but MUSE…I might need your help with the magic dust. THINK YOU CAN DELIVER?!

Can you be like a pharmaceutical product that makes me forget my day job and focus on the evening’s creative writing? Can you be a forgiving deity that helps me start every day, maybe even hour, as a new creative person – not hung up on past nowhere-going thoughts, authorship mistakes, but moving forward?

How much money (or other stuff???) would I need to sacrifice at your electronic/virtual altar for me to feel appreciated, loved, read, understood, all the things a writer wants…?

OK, let’s get real – would I need to cut my finger and bleed onto a cotton ball for you to help me write THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL in 2011? Or at least the Great American Autobiography? In my mind they are the same thing – I don’t care if they are in yours, Muse.
I know the book I want to write. But so many things – people, alarm clocks, weather changes, elevator stops, crop yields, seemingly ridiculous things derail me.

CAN YOU HELP ME WRITE A BOOK IN 2011?
FINISH A BOOK?

I’m not asking you to help me sell it – I think that requires a different god (OOPS, I first typed “dog,” LOL) from the galaxy.

You are not a god of selling, but of creating. We have to look elsewhere in the pantheon for help with selling.

Please help me finish a book and not beat myself down near-death in the process.

That is my request for you, dear Muse.

To recalibrate – this post was inspired by an Etsy print by an Italian artist (Vincenzo Rizzo), I clicked Purchase on Monday but none of it is really real yet. He has not shipped, and I have not paid.

IT’S VIRTUAL. Like the Roman and Greek gods and goddesses we studied in pre-junior high grades in the 1970s. Theoretical, words on paper.

Really…are our daily lives more solid than that? Let’s discuss…HMM…