What Inspires Your Writing Muse?

“You can find your writer's voice by simply listening to that little Muse inside that says in a low, soft whisper, ‘Listen to this...’” — Charles Ghigna

What inspires your writing muse?

A deadline? 

Passion?

Commitment?

If you don’t have an editor or publisher pressuring you with a deadline, do you schedule nonnegotiable time to write? Or do you wait until you feel like you will explode if you don’t put words to paper? I want to encourage you to dip your pen into your soul and write what’s in your heart.

Writing Promises to Self

Deadline Season	Any Other Time
Write every day.	Write when I feel like it or I’m not distracted or procrastinating.
Drink coffee—lots.	Go get a cup of coffee. Drive to Starbucks.
Nuke meals.	Spend an hour per meal, cooking from scratch.
Ignore family.	Enable family members. Do everything for them.
Write every hour.	Take a nap.
Don’t eat. Snack. Nibble at leftovers.	Go make chocolate chip cookies.  Eat batter. Better yet, drive to Baskin Robbins and buy chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.
Write all night.	Stop procrastinating. Start writing tomorrow.

Writing Quotes to Inspire Your Muse

• “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.”—Marcel Proust
• “All writing comes by the grace of God.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.” —Gerald Brenan
• “I write to discover what I think.”—Joan Didion
• “How do you know if you're a writer? Write something everyday for two weeks, then stop, if you can. If you can’t, you’re a writer. And no one, no matter how hard they may try, will ever be able to stop you from following your writing dreams.” — Charles Ghigna
• “Enter the writing process with a childlike sense of wonder and discovery. Let it surprise you.” — Charles Ghigna
• “The act of writing brings with it a sense of discovery, of discovering on the page something you didn’t know you knew until you wrote it.”— Charles Ghigna