When you write, you’re never alone. Your characters are with you, your worlds. And if you’re lucky, so is your muse.
I see my muse as that inner voice that tells me to add a paragraph break in a spot where I don’t think it’s necessary, but provides perfect pacing when I’m reading the piece through. I show her respect when I make the changes that just feel right and follow the scenes that play out in my mind. The more I trust my muse, the more she wants to play. The work I’ve done up to this point (and there has been a lot of it) has heightened my ability to communicate with her, taught me the skills I need to let go and let the words come. I feel my muse with me when I write.
It’s when the work is finished that the loneliness can set in. My muse has moved on by the end of a piece, whether I want to or not. I think that’s part of why I seek to be published.
I love my characters, good or bad. I want to share them with others. Putting them on the page is a good first step, but when they make their way into other peoples’ hearts and minds, they become that much more real. Now they exist in you. I look forward to being able to talk to people about the characters that I’ve spent so much time with, to hear the readers’ thoughts and maybe get a fresh perspective on characters that I still have more to learn from.
Writing bridges the gap between the community in my mind and the one in the world I live in, bringing the characters, the worlds I create, that much closer to me and (hopefully) my readers as well.
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