The Muse Trap

Today, Kyrie's daughter Astra. She's very bright and sunny, and thus suitable for illumination!

So…my muse is kind of scruffy, and she glares a lot. I imagine that she's a chain-smoker, because it would just figure, right, with me being allergic to cigarette smoke? My muse likes colorful language. It's a bit purple for my tastes right out of the gate, but we usually catch it in the edits.

Yesterday I posted about how I make myself sit down and write after the end of my workday (I have a perfectly good office at work, after all, which I do not have at home). I make myself do it even if I don't have much time at all. I do it even if all I have is ten or fifteen minutes.

That ten or fifteen minutes is not any ordinary quarter-hour. I am building a muse trap.

Not long ago I found myself on a flight to Wisconsin (where I got older, if not precisely grew up, for those keeping track of that sort of thing). I don't fly often, and usually I don't listen to music when I do, but that day I had the urge, so I dug my earbuds out of my purse and slipped them in.

The urge to write, WRITE, WRITE NOW! was immediate and overwhelming. I hesitated, confused, then whipped out my journal. Half an hour later I stopped and had a good think about what had just happened. It wasn't terribly hard to unravel--was, in fact, ridiculously simple.

It was this: For the past several years I had only put on my earbuds when I sat down to write. My subconscious mind had locked onto the action of putting on the earbuds as an indicator that it was time to write. And voila--the muse trap!

This isn't a new idea by any means and I had even read about it before. There is, in fact, an excellent book out there called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg in which the author describes how people, sports teams, and even businesses learned how to rewire their habits (or other people's) and experienced dramatic change.

But--it's real! (No, obviously I don't believe everything I read, even when I should.) And you can use it! So I'm sharing it! Here is how to Built Your Own Muse Trap in 15 minutes a day!

Part One: Steal Underpants. No, wait. Part one is, identify something that you do (or could start doing) every time you sit down to write. It doesn't have to be special or weird or involve chocolate, though it certainly can. If it involves an object, that object does not need to be Magical (my earbuds are the same sorry old set that came with my iPhone). Of course, you can certainly choose something Magical (say, super-special noise-blocking earbuds) but if you do make sure that it's the action that's important, not the object. Because then what happens if you desperately need to finish Chapter 15 and…you lost/forgot/your dog ate/your cat mangled your Magical object?? Yeah. So…it's the ACTION that's important. The cue, if you will, that it is now time to get serious. It's on. Oh yeah, it is.

Part Two: Sit down and write. But right before you do, use your cue. Put in the earbuds. Light the candle you carry with you even when you travel because, really, hotel rooms could stand to smell more like awesome. Pop open a beverage of your choice. But it should not be a beverage you have every day, unless you are writing every day. As you should. But I digress.

The thing is, this habit street is two-way. Once your brain latches onto a cue, you need to reinforce that cue by immediately doing the habit you want to form (writing). If you use the cue and DON'T write then you would have been me on that airplane if I hadn't whipped out the journal. If you are not reinforcing, you are undermining. You want your muse trap to work, don't you? So be particular about what your muse-summoning action is. Something you can do anywhere…but also something that you don't otherwise do all the time.

Don't look at me like that. I know you can figure this out.

Part Three: PROFIT. A muse! In the trap! One that is, given, probably glaring at you. But that's just because you haven't finished that story yet. And now you will!

In the future I'm thinking I'll need a different cue for editing. I really want to have my Creative-Brain summoned a little differently than my Editor-Brain. Maybe then I'll be able to switch gears in the flick of an…earbud?

So get out there, and figure out a good habit for yourself, for a change. Figure out how you're going to Build Your Very Own Muse Trap. In fifteen minutes a day. Although, usually it's not just fifteen minutes. But that's another post.

And remember…be vewwwwy quiet. We're hunting habits.