Musing over a Muse

“I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was started on a new story and I could not get going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.” - Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

That is the quote that inspired this blog. It is how I write. If I can just get that first sentence. That first true sentence, regardless of if I have to rewrite it, or it gets moved to the bottom and becomes the last sentence, once it’s on the screen, it’s there, it’s a start.  That’s todays topic. Inspiration. Where do you find your muse?

Even though I admit I am not a writer, I have a personal blog. I don’t even know how to classify it. It started as a joke.I can update it from my phone and  I will openly admit when I am out with my friends, I drunk dial or drunk text, It was an outlet for my drunk texting. Some how over time it’s evolved in to a place where I put my more personal thoughts.  I am an over analyzer and it is a great place for me to lay things out in print and look them over. Even though it’s public not many people I know in real life follow it and I don’t put any thing too personal on there. I called it “Like the second coming of Hemingway” with the subtitle “I write best when I am drunk, words spill out of my heart.” Like I said, drunken ramblings. Most recently of how much I love my boyfriend. No one wants to read that dribble. My muse is either my heart or the booze, maybe a little of both. Regardless of the muse, the words do come freely, no grammar, no word count, no theme. Just my rambling thoughts. 

This blog comes fairly easy as well, what is my struggle, how am I going to address it? Talk about it. (it’s post 2, I might be getting ahead of myself)  It’s a free flowing format that is similar to what is in my head, I can get the first sentence, and the rest just flows. It’s the struggle in my head only now it's on paper. It’s the questions I need to ask and wish I had someone to ask them to, the things that I wonder if anyone else thinks about.  My muse is my struggle. I don’t know if it’s so much of a muse, as a motivator. 

Every time I have  to write, I ask my two writer friends for their advice. One who runs several writing workshops in the Milwaukee area and one who is working on a PhD in creative writing. Real writers, not like me. They try and offer advice but much like every other writer I know they are trained to make things up. Tell stories. While I would trust them to fix my grammar, (and one of them probably should) they just  don’t write they way a historian writes. It’s a totally different art form. Recently, one of them suggested I read my favorite author and just write like him. That seems like a good idea but here is the problem. I read primary documents. I can not write like 18th century politicians. I could, but even I wouldn’t want to read it. The other people I like to read are the so called “main stream historical writers” Ellis, McCullough,Goodwin-Morris, Issacson (who by the way I don’t consider a historian, I consider a biographer) Raphael. These great writers who are discredited because they write for the public not for the academic. So? Because they write for the public it doesn’t make them flawed. In my  opinion it makes them better writers. They are doing what I feel needs to be done. They are delivering history to everyone. They are keeping history in the main stream. That being said, a good historical writer needs to be able to write for everyone . Academic, main stream, and research writing for journals. How do you find your favorite researcher? How do you begin to develop your own style of research writing? That’s the big question. I think I could read a dozen journals and never read the same writer twice. 

Tomorrow is Ben Franklins birthday. If there is any subject that I can research for hours and write about for days it’s my Ben. I’ve got enough books with in arms reach to read for a month, so I’ve challenged myself to compose between 10-20 bullet points of facts that I didn’t know before and turn them in to some sort of paper. I can’t believe I am giving myself homework during the winter break.