ISWG Blog Hop May 1: The Muse is Wrathful

Happy Wednesday! The Insecure Writers’ Group is a group of writers offering motivation and encouragement to all those taking on the challenges of writing. Every month the ISWG sponsors a blog hop where writers can blog about a topic related to overcoming obstacles and exploring various aspects of the writing journey. If you’d like to participate in a future hop you can join here. It’s always a great experience, and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in writing and sharing with other writers.

The co-hosts for this May 1 IWSG blog hop are Victoria Marie Lees, Kim Lajevardi, Nancy Gideon, and Cathrina Constantine!

Every month there is a question to discuss (optional).

May 1 question – How do you deal with distractions when you are writing? Do they derail you?

Short answer…yes.

Long answer…

The longer I stay away, the harder it is to return to my writing.

On the days that you don’t write, on the days the words won’t flow, how do you feel? 

Days slip by, and I look at my word counts guiltily. They are somewhere around 100 and well, 0. I’ve been here before, time periods in my life where it feels too difficult to sit down and write. My mind spins and spins and I can’t settle down enough to sit down and commit anything to a page. And every day that goes by, it gets harder and more daunting to return. At some point, I feel like too much time has passed to come back at all. 

Sometimes I imagine a Muse of writing, watching me from the corner, looking over my shoulder disapprovingly at the blank page in front of me. She will sit silently, waiting to see what I’ll write, her face hopeful and expectant. But when she sees that I’m not going to write anything at all, her demeanor changes. When she realizes that, her face transforms. Her mood darkens. Gradually, her emotions build. And let me tell you, she isn’t just angry.

She is wrathful. 

When the Muse is happy, she is ethereal, with flowing dresses and pink flowers in her hair and soft light. These are the times that I am writing. When I’m writing consistently, I feel in harmony with her. She and I are working side by side, the energy flowing, the atmosphere positive and crackling with productivity. But when I’m not, I see her as a stony, angry goddess, ancient and unforgiving, brandishing blank pages at me like she wants to hurl them at my head. More words, she demands. I want more words. Why can’t you just make the time? What else do you have to do that could be more important? It should be simple to sit down for 30 minutes and just write something down. So, why do you always find something to distract you—a game on your phone, the news, or any of the other random daily tasks that take away your attention?

The answer is, I don’t really know. I don’t know why my mind is so restless. I suspect it has a lot to do with the pace of modern life, by the endless stream of input competing for our attention. It makes it very challenging to sit down and be still enough to write your thoughts. Once you start it becomes easier. But making that initial effort, taking that step to put down the phone, the tablet, or anything else that is holding your attention is not an easy task. Sometime in the future, I’m going to have to learn how to be more understanding of myself when I fall short.

The Muse is just going to have to chill out a little bit.

How do you find the time to write? For me I’m not sure it’s just about time. I think it’s more about concentration and stillness. I find I’m lacking those traits more and more lately. Have you experienced this before? Are there any tricks that you use to help yourself focus when you’re writing? How do you deal with the distractions of the modern world?

I hope that unlike me, you’ve had many productive writing sessions these past few weeks, and I wish you many more to come!!

-Winter