writing doesn’t have to be a soul-sucking endeavour excavating every little bit of joy out of your life
The Muse Letter No. 146
This essay starts, like all of my essays do, with a high level of procrastination and waiting for the muse to arrive. I should know better I think as I write this, I’ve been teaching writing for three years now and the first thing I say to my students is: to not wait for inspiration to come.
If I would practice what I teach, I would have started this text with a writing exercise, I would have set a timer and written a little poem based on a random word I picked by flipping through a book. Or I would have just started to free write, my stream of consciousness, well I guess that is what I am doing now. Buckle up, fuckleheads! We’re on a quest to kill a white page.
I do often wonder what it is that makes us write. Is it prestige? Connection? A deadline? Or the fact that I just turned on the volume of the song that is playing on my Spotify list so I can tune out all other thoughts? My inner critic, who I seem to be on good speaking terms for the last few years, is a valued …