The Quest for the Missing Muse: Memory Problems

This could be working.

To reconnect with my missing Muse and reestablish my writing habit, I charged myself with writing to a daily prompt. The intent of writing every day was to break whatever dam was blocking my creativity.

Today I won’t be posting what I wrote to the daily prompt. I haven’t done it. (I’m going to be optimistic and say I haven’t done it yet.) It was to list foods that remind me of summer and to describe them using all senses. It would be a good exercise but I’m finding that these prompts result in writing that’s memoir-ish, and not satisfying.

I’m not cut out to be a memoirist. The joke among my friends is that if it happened more than three weeks ago, I don’t remember. That’s proving to be a handicap for logging in to Web sites. Security protocols ask who my high school mascot was, what street I lived on when I was six years old, what bank gave me my first car loan, and I can’t answer those questions. I have to keep a cheat sheet of the responses which pretty much defeats the whole point.

Writing every day could be having a positive effect, though.  I find myself called to revisit a story that I began last March and never finished. It’s been so long since I worked on it, I don’t recall all the details. Instead of writing to today’s prompt, I’m rereading what I wrote (about 25,000 words) to refresh my memory and pick up where I left off.

I’m not ready to say I’ve found my Muse. I don’t feel that irresistible compulsion to write. My characters still aren’t talking to me. Maybe, though, there’s a crack in that dam.