writing

“It isn’t easy. Nobody has ever done it consistently. Those who try hardest, scare it off into the woods. Those who turn their backs and saunter along, whistling softly between their teeth, hear it treading quietly behind them, lured by a carefully acquired disdain.

We are speaking, of course, of The Muse.”

–Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing/Essays on Creativity

Many people imagine the life of a writer as one of awakening each morning to a flowing stream of words that pour onto our writing tablet or through our fingers and onto the computer string, our greatest challenge being that of writing or moving our fingers quick enough on the computer keys to catch the words.

There are times like that. But more often than not, we struggle to find those words that ideally give readers a smooth ride into the escape of our stories and novels.

A more honest way of describing what we do is to say that the smoother our sentences flow and the more intense a readers entrancement into at story, the more the writer toiled at kneading and carving that ease of journey presented in the magic carpet of our words.

But what of The Muse?