I Met My Muse on a Stormy Day

I will never forget that morning. The sun peeked through the leaves, casting abstract shadows on my arm. It was warm, but I held my coffee cup close to my face, letting the steam fill me up. I wasn’t thinking about anything except the aroma of a specialty dark roast when the thought pushed its way forward and cleared its throat obnoxiously: Write a novel.

Um, write a novel? About what? I don’t even write anything anymore…what makes you think I wanna write an entire friggin novel?

I dismissed the silly thought and went on about my day, washing dishes, weeding my flower bed, reading children’s books, watching Lifetime. But the thought was persistent. It returned to me in the shower and again when I tried to fall asleep that night. And for the next week anytime I would leave my mind unoccupied that crazy idea would return with imaginary people in tow, people that I was really starting to care a good deal about.

I began to write lives around those people, penciling in fine details of their relationships and personalities until they seemed more and more real and the idea of their realness seemed less and less crazy.

Before I knew it, a novel really did begin to emerge. And the whole thing was just so incredible, so unreal that I did what any sane, logical person would do in that situation. I told everyone I knew. Everyone. People I liked. People I didn’t like. I just kept on blabbing about this story that felt more like it was writing me than the other way around.

But then I freaked out a little. No, a lot. I deleted everything I wrote, shredded the printed manuscripts, and drank a lot of wine because I had no interest in writing a memoir and I didn’t consider myself a fiction writer, yet I was caught somewhere in between the two. Besides, there were women being trafficked all over the world and children beaten in their own homes, and if the world’s burdens weren’t enough I had my own family to tend to. I convinced myself that my art wasn’t as important to me as I thought, and since I wasn’t sure what to do I chose the easy nothing. I let that apathy linger for months and months. It all sounds so dramatic to me now, and I’m sure to you also, but it felt real to me at the time. A literary depression, if you will.

 I never could get those characters out of my head though. They had become dear to me… like godchildren, perhaps. These stories I gathered, either through my observations or imaginations, deserved to be dusted off and refinished. With enough love they could someday be appreciated by others. I had to figure out how to give them a voice. It took me a while but I eventually let go of all the crap I had attached to my craft, all of the pointless expectations and unsolicited criticisms, and I just actively wrote. That may have been the most sensible thing I’ve done since the idea manifested.

A project like this takes diligence, patience, and a unique belief in one’s art, even (and especially) when doubt seems so much more attainable. I have a vague idea of what I’ll do after this novel is complete, but as of now I just want to write. Freely. Simply. Because it makes me happy. Because this work means a lot to me. Because I have no reason not to.