Finding Your Muse: Ideas and Inspiration

A muse, to me, is something that inspires and facilitates your stories. Some people find their muse in a person and some find theirs in an object or place. You can certainly have more than one and they can also change over time.

Mine is water. At least, that’s my primary muse.

I grew up on the Maine coast. From my bedroom window, I could look out and see an inlet that turned to mud flats at low tide. My grandmother had a cottage on an island in the middle of lake that we went to as often as possible. Even small bodies of water work, like a frog pond or tidal pool.

Water works for me because it relaxes me and helps silence the inner critic, allowing the words to flow more freely. I spend less time second-guessing myself, so more words get on the page.

The view of Lac Ouimet from the hotel room at Mont-Tremblant, Quebec.

My husband and I attended a wedding last week in Quebec for two of his university friends. Let me tell you, I desperately needed that break.

I didn’t do much writing; we arrived Wednesday evening, completely burned out from what turned into at least a nine-hour drive, then Thursday was the wedding, Friday a day to relax, and Saturday an early departure to make it home before dark. Things like driving and being fully present for the wedding took priority over writing, but Friday? Friday had a glorious amount of editing. And part of the reason it went so well was because of the gorgeous hotel room view of Lac Ouimet.

Seriously, if you ever have a chance to visit, do. This place would be amazing for a writing retreat.

And no discussion of water-as-muse would be complete without acknowledging mythic and folkloric contexts. Over and over in mythology and fairytales, water becomes a liminal space – a transition, most often from the living to the dead, but also from real life to fantasy. Think the River Styx, or the Lady in the Lake from King Arthur, or the Japanese fairytale of the fisherman taken to the bottom of the sea to marry a woman in a magical land there and later returns home to find that many years had passed.

Clearly, there is something about water that inspires the imagination; it’s not just me!

Do you know your muse?

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