![\"Chubby](\"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016-05-24_01.jpg\"\n)
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
He might be. Especially if you’re writing comedy!<\/p>\n
He’s not mine\u2014except perhaps for the little bit of whimsy he’s bringing to this blog post.<\/p>\n
So if he’s not your muse, who is? What is<\/em> a muse, anyway?<\/p>\n A muse is the personification of inspiration and energy that comes from\u2014somewhere<\/em>.<\/p>\n Whether you think it comes from the divine, the universe, your intuition, your subconscious, or the All Night Diner for Dancing Giraffes\u2014it doesn’t matter. It’s real, and you know it when you’re plugged in to your muse.<\/p>\n Maybe you wake up at 3 AM and invent a painting technique that better enables you to represent the texture of a tree trunk\u2014and you just have to get up and try it!<\/p>\n Or you stay up past 3 AM, writing a story that flows from you in a river of purple ink. It’s exciting and a little dizzying, because you feel so alive<\/em>. You may be directing the story a little, but the characters are mostly leading you to places that you never thought they’d go. Each scene is a discovery!<\/p>\n Of all the types of creative expression I practice, writing is my deep calling. I used to think inspiration would strike like a bolt of lightning. I would hear angels singing, as they floated to earth with pithy phrases and perfectly-formed literary sentences.<\/p>\n Over time, I began to think of writing as work. Not in the good sense\u2014when I’m deeply engaged and working hard on something meaningful\u2014but in the not-so-good: slogging through flat ideas and flat sentences.<\/p>\n Then I realized that I need to have a relationship with my muse. I have to nourish her with walks in nature and trips to the art museum, with summer concerts in the park and playing with watercolors.<\/p>\n And guess what? The more I feed my creativity, the more inspiration and enthusiasm I have to express.<\/p>\n And that makes all the difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He might be. Especially if you’re writing comedy! He’s not mine\u2014except perhaps for the little bit of whimsy he’s bringing to this blog post. So if he’s not your muse, who is? What is a muse, anyway? A muse is the personification of inspiration and energy that comes from\u2014somewhere. Whether you think it comes from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,22,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","category-inspiration","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":464,"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions\/464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}