Connect with Your Muse

By Linda Dessau

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3. Spending time in creative contemplation and expression

Allow whatever the muse has evoked to be expressed through your creative medium(s). Here's where tuning back in to your inner voice comes in. Whatever you've taken in from your external source of inspiration still needs to be filtered through your unique lens of skills, experiences, opinions, ideas and sensations. Otherwise you'd simply be reproducing exactly what you've seen or heard.

Put it into Play

It's time to make another date with your Inner Artist — only this time you're in search of your muse. Block off some time for simply noticing what inspires you — if you can't help but rush home and write, draw, build, photograph, compose or otherwise create something, well, call it a happy bonus of this exercise.

Muse Minding for the Busy Creative Artist

What if you don't have time to go traipsing all over the city to the spots where you find inspiration? What if your creativity has a deadline? What if you have a busy life that involves other people's schedules?

Here are two possible solutions:

• Make sure that your creative workspace evokes your muse. Find objects, words and/or photos that capture the essence of your muse and place them prominently in your creative workspace. Move them around every month or so, so you don't stop noticing them.

• Be open to spontaneous sightings. When you're rushing around from place to place, worrying about what you did yesterday or dreading what you need to do tomorrow, there's not much time or space for the muse to get your attention. Experiment with slowing down occasionally and checking in — my muse has been talking to me a lot in the car (as long as I leave the radio off!), and also really likes to chat with me when I'm in the shower (no kidding — and I've heard that water evokes inspiration for others — how about you?).

So, what is it about water?

Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong. — Lao-Tzu (600 B.C.)

My muse whispers to me through water, if I yield to it and bend my resistance. •

© Copyright 2005, Linda Dessau.

About the Author | More by Linda Dessau
Linda Dessau, the Self-Care Coach, helps artists enhance their creativity by addressing their unique self-care issues. Feel like your creativity is blocked? Sign-up for the FREE e-course, "Roadblocks to Creativity" by visiting www.genuinecoaching.com.

06/22/05