I am working on Cat and Mouse, and got stuck, so I began wondering about muses among the artists and writers here...
In CFAN, the writers created a whole universe for writers to inhabit, along with their muses. It's a very cool idea, that unfortunately has gotten bogged down. At the beginning though, it was a way for writers to enter the creative process and actually converse with their inspirations.
I've heard people refer to the mythical muses, personal muses, divine inspiration, talking stuffed animals.... all sorts of things. Some people say they carry on whole conversations with a muse. So, what inspires you? Do you have a personified muse in the mythic sense? Do you think it's just a part of yourself, or an outside force? Do ideas just strike you out of the blue? Do you have one muse, or many? Do you talk to them? Do you name them?
Hubby writes poetry, and he finds inspiration everywhere. But he recently wrote his first fan fic, starring Maggott, where that character was his inspiration.
I get inspired by reading comics and trying to fill in the holes I see, or by situations that I think would fit a certain character well. The inspiration for Cat and Mouse was a line of dialog that just came to me one day, and that's how many of my stories start. Shadow Man began with an off-the-cuff comment by Bamf (*sniff*, I miss him...
) about Kurt being a perfect spy.So, I guess I don't have a muse in that classical sense. At least not one I carry on conversations with. Or do I, and I just don't know it?
Anybody got any thoughts on the muse phenomenon? Are muses metaphor? Reality? Psychosis?
:D:D:D Please tell me I'm not the only CATS freak here. That would be cool if there are more here.
I think I understand why it's done, though. There's a particular feeling that I get when I'm writing something good - the words sound a little bit alien to me, and when I read them over again it's almost like I can't remember having thought them up, that they didn't actually come from me. And I can't like something I've written unless it has that alien quality to it, that detached, foreign feeling.
