Authors and Their Muses

In 1932, Alice Pleasant Liddell Hargreaves was awarded an honorary PhD by Columbia University. She wasn’t being honoured for anything she had accomplished herself, but for being the Muse who inspired Lewis Carroll to write Alice in Wonderland. Although she had rarely seen Carroll in the 70 years since the novel had been written, she was celebrated by the President of the University for 'awakening with her girlhood's charm the ingenious fantasy of a mathematician'. She was 'the moving cause - Aristotle's 'final cause' - of this truly noteworthy contribution to English literature'. 

The idea of honouring Muses isn’t new; the Greeks built temples to the Muses (the word ‘Museum’ comes from ‘cult place of the Muses’), and an influential Masonic lodge in pre-Revolutionary France, The Nine Sisters, was named after the Muses. Some artists are keen to share their Muse with the public; others can be fiercely protective of theirs. Declining an invitation to the MTV Europe Awards in 1996, Nick Cave wrote ‘my Muse is not a horse, and if indeed she was, I would not harness her to this tumbrel’.

Although I’ve never written prose, I’ve always been interested in the idea of the Muse. When I was writing music in the band Billy Ruffian, I often found that the first line of a lyric, or a guitar part, would appear in my head without any conscious thought, and I would have to race to get a first draft down on paper before the psychic energy disappeared and the idea was gone. My Muse didn’t take a specific form, but would often appear at particular times (usually at the most inconvenient time possible, like when I was in the shower, or else when my conscious mind was switched off – in the middle of the night, or daydreaming at work).

Recently, I began reading The Lives of the Muses by Francine Prose, which provided biographies of Muses down the ages, including Alice Liddell, Yoko Ono and Elizabeth Siddal. This book stuck firmly to real people, however, and I had the feeling that Muses often take on a more ethereal form. I wanted to look a bit deeper into the idea of the Muse, and how different artists think about their creative inspirations, so I spoke to five authors: Sarah Perry, whose debut novel After Me Comes the Flood was published by Serpent’s Tail in 2014, James Miller, author of Sunshine State and The Lost Boys, as well as a Creative Writing professor at Kingston University, Meike Ziervogel, a publisher and author of the novels Magda, Clara’s Daughter and Kauthar, all published by Salt, the poet Andrew McMillan, whose latest collection Physical was published by Jonathan Cape in July, and Sam Mills, author of The Quiddity of Will Self and co-founder of indie publishing house Dodo Ink.

 

Meike Ziervogel

I was interested to find out what form the Muse takes, how it can be visualised, and whether it is constant or changeable. The most concrete example came from Meike Ziervogel: ‘my Muse is an Ancient Greek Nymph, Peirene. When Peirene's eldest son was accidentally killed by Artemis, the Goddess of Hunting, the Nymph wept so many tears that eventually she turned into a water spring. The poets of Corinth discovered the Peirene source and drank its water for inspiration. For me, Peirene symbolises  the idea of metamorphosis (turning a loss into an inspiration) and the art of translation (translating feelings into words, images, stories). She also lends her name to my publishing house, Peirene Press. And at Peirene HQ, the Nymph and I battle it out every day. She is very real, with opinions and tantrums and smiles and the occasional hug for me. I record our adventures truthfully in my weekly blog 'The Pain &Passion of a Small Publisher'.'

For Andrew McMillan, the Muse ‘manifests itself as different people at different times; which is to say it’s always bodily, but then also always absent, or a longing of sorts, so an absent bodily Muse to which I'm trying to return’. James Miller talks of specific people acting as Muses, but also identifies a more intangible element; for him, ‘the Muse can be both internal and external. For a start, we often write to win the approval of others – whether our parents, members of the opposite sex or for friends – and these people can become a ‘Muse.’ Certainly, the desire to delight (or appal) a few special people in my life has been one of the spurs to my writing, but really the Muse is a darker sort of internal-external energy that seems to be both a part of me and at the same time to be something else that is speaking through me.’

The idea of the Muse is a long-term interest of Miller’s: ‘I’ve always found the idea of the Muse quite fascinating because it dismantles the idea of individual self-expression: it’s not about the artist – the artist is just a vehicle through which something else, something much bigger than themselves is being expressed. Like when Milton invokes the Muse at the beginning of Paradise Lost – he’s making the point that this is not his individual self-expression, quite the opposite: this is God, speaking through him – he’s not ‘justifying the ways of God to men’ and rewriting the Bible, that would be heresy, it’s God who is the real author.  Our present age is far too obsessed with the self and individual identity (the curse of ‘authenticity’ or, worse still, ‘personality’) and fails to recognise that much artistic expression is about the manifestation of great energies and forces.’ This point is reinforced by Ziervogel: ‘Creativity is team work. The idea of the sole, lonely creator is a myth. Without Peirene I couldn't write nor run my publishing house. And without me she wouldn't have a voice.’

 

Sarah Perry

By contrast, Sarah Perry had never thought much about the concept of Muses: ‘if I thought about it all, perhaps it would’ve been Robert Graves that first came to mind, and his mystical attachment to the White Goddess, which of course was all rather silly.’ When prompted, though, ‘what immediately occurred to me was the image of an impish spirit possessing various people and objects I meet and find, making them for brief periods terribly compelling. I’ve a tendency to become quite infatuated with people (strangers, acquaintances, colleagues, people on the 8.30 to Liverpool Street) and put them, bent out of all recognition, into my writing. It is much, much nicer to think of this as the work of my Muse rather than my tendency to discard people as soon as they stop interesting me’. Perry’s Muse, then, is ever-changing: in the past three or four years, it has appeared in the form of ‘the university housemate of my oldest friend’s husband, that time my friend mistook a clump of leaves for a dead bird, a chance remark my husband made as he drove me through Essex, the American essayist Maggie Nelson, a London clergyman, the right foot of one of my goddaughters, Eleanor Marx and the very faint speech impediment of the Mad Men actor Jared Harris.’

Whereas Muses traditionally take on human or animal form, Sam Mills finds hers in a place: ‘I always refer to Manchester as my Muse. It is my favourite city in the world. For me, it beats Venice, Dublin and Paris. The moment I step off the train at Manchester, I feel inspired and vivified by its energy; I wrote most of The Quiddity of Will Self at various coffee shops in Manchester over a 9-year-period. I have attempted the same routine when I am down south in London, but it just isn’t the same; London is too bustling and stressful and causes my Muse to flee.’

Mills first became aware of her Muse at a young age: ‘I think it is quite common for writers to cope with difficult/unusual childhoods with the aid of a Muse. On paper, my childhood looks awful – my Dad had a breakdown and developed schizophrenia, my family fell into terrible poverty etc - yet I remember it as a largely happy time. I recall wandering around the garden, blissfully lost in book ideas. Perhaps I found my Muse then as a way of ignoring the disasters unfolding, thereby pushing them into the background and escaping to a glorious imaginative world instead. I wrote my first novel at the age of 11 and received my first rejection letter then too. During my teen years, my Muse was very demanding. I used to write several thousand words a day, 7 days a week, after finishing my schoolwork, often working until one in the morning.’ James Miller first became aware of his, ‘in the sense of an overwhelming desire to write,’ as a teenager: ‘I would often write material without really understanding why I was writing or what I was saying - it was rather more as if I were being led forward by something.’ Maybe the Muse has a special effect on adolescents – as Miller says, ‘there can be something sexual about the Muse, like a psycho-sexual power, a fierce libidinal drive that manifests itself in artistic creation.’

So who is the dominant force in the relationship? Author or Muse? Sarah Perry has no doubts: ‘Oh, the Muse, without question. My powers of concentration are helpless against a new idea, to the extent that roughly once every six months I Google BUY RITALIN ONLINE UK. We’ve never fallen out, though I live in terror of my imagination deserting me. I am completing edits on my second novel, and commencing work on my third, and am quite frightened that I don’t yet have a plot for a fourth in mind. What if I never do? I find the idea of my Muse deserting me just fractionally more terrifying than the idea of death (I’ve thought about that outlandish sentence several times to be certain it’s true, and yes, yes: it is).’

 

James Miller

For other writers, the relationship is more of a tussle: James Miller talks of ‘a sort of continuous comingling of both’, while accepting that ‘the Muse takes over when it wants too’. Andrew McMillan, too, talks about the need to ‘wrestle control of a situation back to the self’. Sam Mills says that ‘if I don’t obey my Muse, if I ignore her and fail to write regularly, I start to suffer. I feel agitated, for my mental energy froths into a kind of excess; I will become paranoid and anxious about silly little things. This will all dissipate the moment I start to write, when I will enjoy an inner sigh and a sense of peace. I don’t see writing as therapy; nor it is easy; in fact, it’s very, very hard, and I love the challenge of it. But I am addicted to writing and so I always feel much better when the words are flowing.’

There are ways of controlling the Muse though. James Miller elaborates: ‘there are various techniques for channelling the Muse – or perhaps simply drawing on the subconscious – and perhaps these techniques are best understood as productive writing habits, I’m not sure. Writing early in the morning can help, because the day is fresh and the mind still ghosted by dreams from the night. Certain types of music – particularly, for me, more ambient, drone or industrial music can help, as can some types of classical and dance music. Dance music is good as the beat can help induce a trance-like state through rhythm-repetition which can bring one and keep one in the writing flow. Classical music can induce very intense emotional states but the downside is that its complex multi-dimensional qualities are too involving – one gets lost in the music and forgets to write. Coffee and other mild stimulants/ intoxicants also help, indeed anything that leads to a mild derangement of the senses (to quote Rimbaud), nothing too drastic but enough to quieten down the more critical, inhibited side of the brain. Alcohol is useless, absolutely the worst – it slays the Muse. Lots of writers drink but actually we should all be tee-total. Sometimes not writing for a long time can help as well, allowing the need to write to build up to unbearable levels.’

Sam Mills is also proactive about summoning up her Muse: ‘I definitely find that practising Transcendental Meditation helps with inspiration, clarity of thinking and imagination. David Lynch wrote a wonderful book called Catching the Big Fish all about TM and creativity. I have also been careful to avoid buying a smartphone – for I am convinced such a device will scare off my Muse. When I go into Manchester to write, I find it very freeing to be away from the internet, from those loops of checking email facebook twitter the guardian website facebook twitter email, and with every hour that passes, I find myself slowly sinking into a zone of deeper creativity that feels akin to a meditative state, until I feel I have virtually lost my personality/ego and am taking dictation. I always know I’ve achieved full unity with my Muse when I can barely articulate my words to the waitress serving me coffee and I fumble with my change – my energies are so deeply internalised that even minor interactions in the outside world feel clumsy and strange. It does mean that I have a phone that people laugh at and that can’t cope with receiving picture messages, which cause it to have some sort of breakdown - this I lament, but I am convinced that the sacrifice is worth it. ’ Ziervogel talks of a need to ‘make space’ for her Muse, while McMillan attempts to cultivate a mental state which is conducive to writing (‘you have to put yourself out into the world in a way that allows poetry to happen to you’).

A sense of ritual is important for Sarah Perry, to summon up the Muse at the moment it is most needed: ‘I don’t do a great deal of writing. I do an awful lot of staring out of the window, and walking, and watching Netflix. And every now and then, when I feel like it, or have a deadline, I write write, in the conventional sense of putting one word after the other. It’s only when I do the real, mechanical, open-a-Word-doc writing writing that I need to coax the Muse out of hiding. Over the years I’ve cultivated rituals without which I’m convinced I’ll not get any ‘proper’ work done. These include always having a candle burning, preferably while very slightly tipsy, and having just had a bath with rose bath oil. Oh: and I’ve also written two novels and a thesis to the accompaniment of five tracks of dreadful ambient music on endless repeat.’

 

Andrew McMillan

And what if the Muse appears unbidden, at an inopportune moment? McMillan says that ‘you can’t put an auto-reply on - you have to trust it, Muses, or writing in general, often go away for a long time, months, maybe years, so if it’s there, if it’s demanding some sort of attention, and if you've decided in any capacity to give your life over to it, then I think you have to answer it’. This is the same for Sam Mills: ‘I am quite happy to wake up in the night with ideas, or to break off in the middle of a party and find a quiet spot and jot down an idea in a notebook. I suppose it became challenging when I had a paid office job. One company that I temped for were moronic, which helped a good deal; I asked for my own office and they gave it to me, despite the fact that I was at the bottom of their hierarchy. That meant I had a quiet place in which to write. However, my second office job was a failure. My Muse would call in the afternoons and I wrote instead of typing letters, so I was soon fired’.

For Perry, no moment is inopportune: ‘I very rarely write anything down, or make notes: I work on the principle that if an idea is good enough to make it into a novel, I’ll remember it. I use my (notoriously appalling) memory as a sort of slush pile reader. On the rare occasions I’m afraid I’ll forget an image or idea, I tend to make a note on my phone (I’m not bothered by notebooks and pens and so on: it’s all wasted on me), which I then invariably forget to check. Consequently, the notebook app on my phone is full of gnomic little phrases such as: “Pendulum seeing snake/not photo.” I have no idea what this means, and it has not made its way into the manuscript.’ By contrast, Ziervogel says ‘I can only hear Peirene call when I'm willing and able to listen.’

The evil twin of the Muse is the ‘critic voice’. For Miller, this ‘usually takes the form of a feeling that ‘this is not good enough.’ One has to try and separate the two voices: submit to the Muse, especially when banging out early drafts and channel the critical voice when it comes to revising and editing. The critical side can be very destructive, chipping away at one’s confidence, spreading feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. Very rarely the two coincide and that’s always when the best writing happens.’ For Meike Ziervogel, the Muse and critic are opposite sides of the same coin: ‘Peirene and I always argue, we are forever working through our little battles. That's part of the creative process’.

Like the Muse, then, the critic is often personalised: Andrew McMillan’s ‘sounds like what I imagine most critics to sound like; slightly tired, world-weary with an air of having to admonish a child for ruining a new bathroom sponge’. Perry’s experience is similar, based on her experiences of creative writing seminars: ‘my first novel was written to the accompaniment of the critical voices – both real and imagined – that were part of Creative Writing at MA and PhD. It is only now I’m liberated from that critical chorus that I realize it was as suppressive and unhelpful as it was instructive and helpful.’ Writing her debut novel, Perry’s critical voice took on the form of ‘an imaginary but not inaccurate MA student on my shoulder whispering: “You’re so old-fashioned. Look, you used an adverb, what the hell? Don’t you read Hemingway? Did you just DESCRIBE something Perry? Have you learned nothing? Nothing? Show, not tell! Show, not tell! LOL look at your adjectives, that’s so sweet. Hey! Why don’t you write about MODERN LIFE, what is this, Thomas Hardy?”’

She acknowledges the usefulness of the critic, but warns that it can become overwhelming: ‘I’ll always be grateful for having had the opportunity to study Creative Writing formally, but it requires some strength of mind to emerge with a firm sense of How You Write. If – like me – you lack confidence in your work, it’s all too easy to internalize the critique.’ Gradually, as her confidence has increased, the hostility of the critic voice has diminished: ‘It was only after Flood was published that I realized one can only write as one writes, and not to committee. It’s been astonishingly liberating to realize that my task is not to attempt to write in a prose style which suits others’ tastes. It is my task to make my writing the best my writing can be. Consequently, whilst it took 5 years to write a 70,000 word novel the first time, the 100,000 word draft of the second novel took nine months. I think I let my Muse have free rein. I am now trying to be on the best possible terms with my own critical voice, which really is the other aspect of the Muse. I can hear it now: it says “Nope”, in a very brisk and definite way. Just that: “Nope”. So I delete and start again. And it’s almost always right, too, except (I hope) for those nights when it has had one too many, and merely laughs in derision for several hours.’

 

Sam Mills

Mills also sees the risk of internalising negative voices, and allowing this to affect her writing: ‘I think every writer has a ‘critic’ voice, the antithesis of a Muse. It’s that horrible voice of doubt that afflicts you on days when you get a bad review or someone slates your book on Twitter. This voice doesn’t necessarily destroy my confidence in my work. Sometimes it just makes me wish my writing was a little more mainstream, so that I could please a wider variety of readers. But the fact of the matter is that I have an eccentric Muse and it is better for me to embrace my bizarre imagination and turn it into a strength, rather than try to write a more traditional/classical book which I’d struggle to write. As a writer, it’s good to constantly strive to improve your craft, but you also have to practise self-acceptance. Even if you can adapt and write in different genres, you can’t change the quiddity of your writing.’

Beyond the objections thrown up by the critic voice, authors face a further challenge: how to ensure their Muse is not overwhelmed by the ‘serious’ business of adulthood. Are special steps needed in order to nurture the imagination and the creative impulse? McMillan talks about a conflict between the Muse and his adult responsibilities: ‘There should be a risk to it, there should be something on the line, otherwise what's the point? And it has to be, despite the business of adulthood, of relationships and family and mortgages and rent payments and the gas bill- it has to remain the most important thing, otherwise it won't ever be satisfying- and even then it won't be satisfying anyway’.

A youthful outlook is important in maintaining creativity, for Miller: ‘One has to try and stay mentally young, which is difficult, as we all become disillusioned and held fast by stale habits (as opposed to productive routines) plus the often deadening pressures of work and the demands of family. I think one has to try and remain open to new ideas, be appreciative of new forms of art and expression and stay optimistic even if everything in the world seems to point towards despair.  I’m not sure if the desire to write ever goes away though.’

Mills has taken more practical steps to protect her Muse: ‘I think I have made decisions to avoid certain ‘serious’ issues that go hand in hand with adulthood. I don’t have a mortgage or a car; I live out of a suitcase. I live a frugal, simple life so that I can devote plenty of time to writing. If I wasn’t a writer, I would have loved to have had children. I don’t think that they are necessarily incompatible, as there are some very fine authors who are also mothers. But I know myself well and I don’t think I would have had the energy to combine the two. I find that a long day’s writing session squeezes every last drop of energy out of me and I struggle to write unless I’ve had a good night’s sleep. I have planned out 15 more books that I want to write before I die, and I calculated that I would need 3 years to write each one. So I made a decision not to have children and devote myself to those books instead. I had better not bloody die before I get them all done – or my Muse will be haunting me on my deathbed, making cross faces.’

Perry admits that she doesn’t do any ‘conscious nurturing’, but does ensure that ‘I’m always making something or other. This is the great gift of my TV-less, cinema-less, unsociable childhood: I am never happier than when left to my own devices. I am a jack of many trades, and by ‘jack’ I really do mean that I do all these things indifferently, at best: singing, and playing various instruments, and sewing, and occasionally painting, and so on. But it is all creative, and all nurtures the imagination, I think. I feel very strongly that every writer should have something to do with their hands which they are not obliged to be any good at.’

This practical approach is more inspiring for Perry than more ‘literary’ pursuits: ‘I’ll level with you: I’m not that into books. I spend a great deal more time watching box sets than I do reading, I have a strong allergic reaction to reading the sort of books one is supposed to read, and I refuse to see reading as some sort of duty which will do me good, like a dose of cod liver oil. I don’t know whether this is a good thing, or a bad thing; on the one hand I suspect I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face, but on the other hand I’m in very little danger of writing the kind of books that I read, which is a pitfall best avoided. In fact, I sometimes think my Muse is more likely to show up while I’m weeding the allotment than when reading Ferrante or Knausgaard.’

Ziervogel is similarly practical, although with a more literary focus: ‘fiction writing is a muscle which you have to train like any other muscle. It's also a skill – like playing an instrument. Creativity and imagination, however, refer to something different. For example, I have read a fair amount of novels in my life where I felt that the writer is skilled but lacks imagination and the creative spark. Creativity – for me – has to do with curiosity and the willingness to go places where you are out of your depth. It's an attitude which can be nurtured even while running the serious business of adulthood.’

So, does everyone have a Muse, and if so, how do we get in touch? As a creative writing tutor, Miller says ‘it’s one of the things that can’t be taught. Does everyone have a Muse? I’d like to think so but I suspect not. I just tell my students to do what I do: try to be open and absorb as many cultural influences as possible, go for long walks, listen to lots of music, write as much as possible and – perhaps most important – try to be fearless in one’s self-expression and not worry about what others might think or say; listen to the Muse, in other words, don’t listen to ‘society’, ‘friends’, ‘parents’ (or even tutors).’

Very few Muses receive the sort of public recognition that Alice Liddel received from Columbia University, but their importance to the creative process is clear. Maybe we need to learn to worship them, as the Greeks did.