Man vs Muse

The Tropics of Hutto

I just bought my third Tropical Blend sports coat; they're made from a mix of fibers-- hemp, sugar cane, those vines Tarzan swings from and whatever kind of straw goes into Panama hats.
Most of my clothes are edible in a pinch and some of them are rather tasty. As a Boy Scout and a geek, I try to be prepared for everything. They laughed at me for my (admittedly inedible) asbestos and lead underpants until flaming nuclear waste from the Russian space station landed here in Hutto. Then they just screamed in agony as I carried them to safety.

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People ask me (as they ask most creative people, but especially those of us they see as more "out there") where I come up with my ideas and stories. My answer often amuses, befuddles or disappoints them. "Everywhere." Yes, it's that simple. I live life, dance, run, swim, mosey, race, float through it, dwell in it, taste it, hear it, see it, smell it, feel it.

It's the difference between driving with your windows up in perfectly climate controlled comfort, noticing nothing outside your Volvo but what's necessary to get you to your destination in your pre-determined time frame, and riding along with the top down in your Miata, tasting the wind, sunshine on your face, hearing the frogs in the stream beside the road, smelling the brook beside the road. In one, you simply do the minimum necessary, arrive at a destination, having experienced and perceived nothing, learned nothing, enjoyed nothing. In the latter, you experienced every glorious second of your trip; it becomes a part of you, you know your world more intimately. (This isn't to say you can't have fun or experience life with the windows up. Don't read more into what I said than I meant, but feel free to be inspired to write a story, paint a picture, sing a song, make a movie about something awesome happening in a Volvo with the windows up!)

Another major contributor is free associating. Despite my geek side, which loves to understand and classify, I also love to let my imagination go wild, with random associations leading me places nobody else thought to go. While this means I occasionally say things that garner odd looks, or even get me in trouble, it also means I can write things nobody else has written.

The last thing I want to mention now is simply that I write. I'm always writing, even if it's just in my head. On the one hand, that doesn't count since there's no "permanent" copy of it. On the other hand, it's good practice. The trick is to put the words onto a physical medium whenever possible, but to still let your mind flow all the time. And I write a lot on paper and the computer.

I always thought constraints on my writing were bad. They can be, but on the other hand, the discipline can bring out things you never had in you. Timed exercises ("write for five minutes and stop, even if it's mid-sentence") and length exercises (a page, under 100 words, exactly 100 words) are things I find not only useful, but to my surprise, a lot of fun. One of the results of doing a variety of these is that you quit worrying about length (unless required for an article or something) when you sit down just to write, or when something suddenly pours out.

The piece with which I opened this blog is a perfect example of all of this. Someone posted something about a "tropical blend sports coat" on Facebook. I thought, "What the heck does that even mean?" I immediately answered that question with some tropical fibers (Free Association), which led to the idea of edible coats (more FA), which reminded me of asbestos underwear (discussed long before Dilbert came out, more FA), and so on. Because I typed this all onto Facebook as I thought of it (write it down!) I had a copy. I squirreled that way in my ideas folder on the computer. Today I ran across it, tweaked it, realized it was close to 100 words, and fertilized, watered and pruned it til it was exactly 100 words.

For informational purposes, this blog is roughly 850 words. But I checked simply from curiosity. I don't really care.


We speak of The Muse, Inspiration, and related names as if some elder goddess walked among us. We say she comes and goes, conveying brilliance or shutting off the flow of words (music, images, whatever) at her will or whim. Frankly, I don't believe it-- whether we speak of a Person or Force. Rather, we either learn to live a life inspired by what's around us, in us, flowing out of us, or we don't.

I do believe in a God who inspires us, and at times even shuts things down. But we're made in God's image, meant to create, If we give ourselves to that, trust God, trust ourselves, then create we will.

The choice is ours.

Thanks to Sally Hanan for re-introducing me to timed exercises and length exercises. I'd forgotten both how much fun and how useful those are.