Episode #237: I Worship At The Altar Of My Muse

This pic was taken during the second to last vacation (early 2010?) that I had decided to treat myself and the wife to. This glass tower is located at the Indianapolis Children's Museum. This was a suggestion made to me by a long time online friend. Indiana is a cool state, and I would love to get back there again someday.

I am very attached {to the proverbial hip} to my muse. If my muse had a thematic entrance, her music would be Judas Priest's The Electric Eye. My muse can simply give me a look that would make me shrink in fear and grovel at the bottom of her knee high leather boots.

You might be wondering, "G.B., what gives? How can a simple literary muse have such a stranglehold on your entire being?"

It's a bit complicated to explain, but I will give it the old William T. Sherman's March to The Sea try. 

To start, my muse is an amalgamation of the many wonderful women that I have/had the pleasure of crossing paths with in the past 40+ years of living/working the good life. All of these fine people had character/personality traits that I had come to admire, and when I started my blogging/writing journey in 2008, the first thing that I needed was a muse. A muse that contained the traits/qualities that I had most admired/appreciated among the women who had crossed my path. A muse, that most importantly to me, was female.

Now I know that sounds mighty strange, or to quote a former co-worker of mine, "You're weird sir.", but truth be told, I've always felt comfortable writing stories from a woman's perspective, which originally showed itself into having strong women and, to use a crass modern term, soy boys. But as I slowly improved my writing skills, the soy boy characters gradually fell by the wayside, and were replaced by male characters that were incredibly nuanced to the point of normalcy.

With the back story out of the way, we move on to the meat of the post: my muse. My muse has influenced my writing in numerous ways, ranging from having a light touch/influence to using a crowbar to muscle their way in, kick me out of the chair and perform a coup d'etat on my person {in the early years of my blogging, I wrote some nifty free-from blog posts, like this one featuring my muse, that largely involved random acts of humorous violence against myself}. In general, she has been my guiding light to how I write my female characters and story scenes.

She has given me solid advice throughout the years, mostly in the form of research. Whether it's been observational nudges {aka people watching} or delicate questioning of others about certain...things, she has been my literary anchor to all of my endeavors. She has managed to nudge me out of my comfort zone by adding certain real world elements to my stories.

With my current series, she has managed to really show me what she's theoretically made of. No matter what idea I'd managed to come up with, she was able, through the sheer force of her personality, show me how to properly work it in without it coming out like a bad screenplay for a bad...movie.

Note: before my muse found her footing, I wrote really, really bad stories that were more suited as outlines for adult movies.

So, she helped me flesh out the concept of a matriarchal monarchy with a devilish twist; a predominately female protagonists/antagonists story line; clothing and other types of accessorizing; and at least a half dozen other concepts, ranging from pre-modern to modern to futuristic/steampunk. In short, with her traveling the path more congested, thus more varied, she has turned herself into a force to be reckoned with. She has gained my trust so completely that I find myself inserting slivers of her being into some of the characters that I write about.

My muse does not have a name, per se, only descriptive pronouns that actually make sense to normal people. But she has earned my respect just the same, which is why she gets to go on mini-vacations to all of the sunny Oceanic hot spots whenever I take a break to do transcription.

This is the story of my literary muse, a vivacious lady with the attitude to match. We all should have a muse that propels us to do better with our writing, no matter what the gender may be.

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved