Death of My Muse

As a young boy, I would lay awake at night composing stories in my head. I was a prolific author, writing story after story every night. At times, I even would compose stories in my sleep. I found it interesting that, as I dreamed, my writing process appeared to be more like reading than physically writing. I could imagine the story, see the action, and even hear the voices of the characters. But in my dreams, I was holding the book the story was contained inside of. I know I was creating the stories because they were of events, characters, and plots I had never read before. In one particularly vivid dream, one that I have never forgotten, I became so frustrated because I could not turn the page to see what was going to happen next. The frustration was so palpable it woke me up. I guess you could say that was my first known case of writer's block!

Unfortunately, as a child, not many of my stories ever made it to paper. I would rather read stories and only wrote when it was assigned for school work. My stories were something I took out each night and played with in my mind as I drifted off into sleep. My muse would speak to me, entertaining me or helping me to escape the angst and drama every teenager passes through on the way to adulthood.

I cannot pinpoint the moment in my life when my muse died, succumbing to the drudgery and mind-numbing effects of the corporate world. But, at some point in my early adulthood, my muse left. I no longer fell asleep creating new stories but rather rehashing the latest office conflict. My dreams, once fertile ground for creativity and imagination, now became a desolate wasteland void of ideas. I no longer felt the urge to create, it took too much energy to create a world away from reality and soon it became easier just to slip into the swamp of unconsciousness.

Where oh where did my muse go? Today, I have the desire to write but I am lacking my creative muse. What once was a simple process of closing my eyes to create a new story is now a laborious task fraught with fitful starts and uninspired prose. Come back my muse!

Maybe if I improve the conditions for my muse, it will come back. My mind is becoming more accommodating for my muse; I read fiction daily and have begun creative mental exercises, creating stories about people and objects as they appear in my vision...flexing the imagination that was once depleted by a fast-paced corporate job.

I know I will be able to tell when my muse returns...it will be the night I wake up frustrated because I cannot turn the page of the story being composed in my mind. That is when I will fly to my laptop, eagerly listening to my muse as it narrates my story!