The Myth of the Muse

Are you wasting time waiting for her?

I am embarrassed to admit…

that I have not come up with a successful way to motivate one of my memoir coaching clients to complete her memoir.

She says that she can only write when “the muse strikes” her.

Unfortunately life gets in the way, and the muse doesn’t seem to be striking her very often. I am not even going to tell you how long we have been working on this book…

This led me to wonder how important this muse really is?

Of course we all know that the concept of the muses came from Greek and Roman mythology. I see it as a romantic concept, but one not very conducive to accomplishing anything in a reasonable period of time.

Having said that, I am certainly not the one to judge, since it took me 38 years to finish Coming To Las Vegas, a true tale of sex, drugs and Sin City in the 70s. And I am currently dealing emotionally with the fact that I began my current memoir in January with the idea of finishing it at the end of summer, and here it is September, and I’m not even finished with the first rough draft!

What I have learned during my past 15 years of serious writing and publishing is that I work better on…