This is a request for your visionary muses. This is a plea for creative genius. This is a call for inspiration.
After my brother died, I started praying for the first time in my adult life. I sung the same hymn over and over again, not sure who I was singing to, not sure who was listening. Yet still, I repeated my refrain:
Please, oh please, don’t take me until I’ve written this book that’s within me.
It felt narcissistic (and therefore wrong) to plead for my life so I could create, but that’s what I did, and that’s how I know that being a writer is more than just a profession. It is a passion. It is a fire that burns within me. It is a deeply spiritual experience, connecting me to the infinite world beyond my minute existence.
When I was a little girl, my dad drove me to the country to stare at the stars. To show me how massive the universe is, he asked me to pick a star and make up a story that was happening on a planet near it.
I concocted some story about little green people, and he enthusiastically listened. “The universe is so expansive and huge, that could very well be happening somewhere. The possibilities are endless, and you could be absolutely right. But chances are, we can’t even imagine what’s out there. Chances are we aren’t even close.”
When people ask me about my belief in a higher power, I tell them this story. The possibilities are endless, but chances are we can’t even comprehend what connects us all, we really have no idea where energy and matter and creativity and divinity and molecules and particles and inspiration and thought all come from.
The only thing I know for certain is there are many things beyond my singular existence, things that influence me in ways I will never fully comprehend.
Elizabeth Gilbert talks about the difference between being a genius and being visited by geniuses. She says that when we think of people as geniuses, we limit creativity to a select few, who often can’t handle the heavy burden and go crazy carrying around the pressure of being important.
But when we think of a genius as the Greeks did, as something that visits you, something that can visit anyone, then we allow creativity to flow more naturally, in and out of all of us.
In her book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Gilbert explores this concept even farther, positing that creative muses flitter around us and we can grab them and use them ourselves, or send them off into the world to visit someone else.
While I wrote my book Bawdy Love, I felt visited by muses, I felt like I had knowledge and inspiration beyond my own. I felt tapped into a sacred world of wisdom, what some may call The Source.
I tired to figure out what it was, but soon realized that my job wasn’t to figure out where inspiration came from, my job was to use the inspiration before it went away.
What I loved most was how at times I felt like you (yes, you, reading this now) were visiting me, telling me what you needed to hear. At times I felt like you were my guest, sitting at my table, writing with me.
At times it felt like I was borrowing your genius.
I am writing to ask you permission to borrow your muses once again.
On Sunday morning, I leave for a small town just across the Mexican border where my dog Albie and I will live for a month as I write the first draft of my next novel.
It is a dark comedy fiction very loosely based on my life. The synopsis so far is this:
Two years after Diana’s brother dies, her partner leaves her and she becomes suicidal. She is given two options by her therapist: go to a mental institution or go home. Diana reluctantly chooses home and is forced to heal in the place she’s been running from her whole life.
While I am so very proud of Bawdy Love and the revolution surrounding it, this is the book I prayed to stay alive to write. This is the creative baby I’ve been gestating for years, and it is ready to be birthed.
In Spanish, dar a luz means to give birth, or literally translated to give light. I am ready to bring this novel to light, but to do that, I need your help.
I am asking for any extra muses you have lying around, any inspiration that helps you through creative road blocks.
It was amazing, feeling all of your support while I wrote Bawdy Love, and I would be ever so grateful if I could have that support again while I work on this novel.
I appreciate any positive vibes sent my way, but I would especially love:
- Art, photographs, music, or quotes that inspire you and help you overcome obstacles and mental blocks.
- Creative geniuses, Goddesses, prayers, juju, saints, and muses sent my way. I’ll be near Rosarito, Mexico, if you want to tell them where to find me.
- Messages encouraging me to keep going, especially hilarious jokes, because laughing through the rough spots is the best way I know how to keep creating.
In return, I will continue to share my inspiration with you, send you lots of love and virtual hugs, and offer you the first peeks at anything I create.
Thank you for being an important part of my creative process. Thank you for supporting me in following my dreams. Thank you for following your own dreams and in turn making this world a more creative place.
With love and light,
Lauren
P.S. Want to send me something via snail mail? Here’s my current mailing address:
Lauren Marie Fleming
7710 Hazard Center Dr. #E139
San Diego, CA 92108
