invite the muse to play

Good things don’t necessarily always start with a good idea. They come when you show up and start working. You invite the good ideas by doing the work that proves you’re ready for the ideas to make themselves known to you. When you prepare, the Muse arrives.

I’ve written every morning for more than sixty-six days now. That’s how long it takes to form a habit. I don’t feel like anything has really come of it yet, other than making it easier to show up every day and writing a blog post on a regular schedule. I guess that’s something. One step at a time. Hopefully ideas will come and I’ll get in the flow of writing creatively.

I had fun doing the writing exercise from my Writing Challenge app one morning. The writing is kind of disjointed when you get a new prompt every couple of minutes, but it’s a fun challenge to get the juices flowing. It feels good just to type, sometimes. I enjoy the physical act of pressing the keys just as quickly as the words come into my brain. Never mind if it makes any sense or is any good. That flow is what eventually gets me to writing something worthwhile most of the time. It primes the pump. It gets me into the rhythm of writing.

For me, writing has just as much to do with the rhythm of the words strung together and the flow of it coming out of my brain and out of my fingers as it has to do with the thoughts themselves. Good things don’t necessarily always start with a good idea. They come when you show up and start working. You invite the good ideas by doing the work that proves you’re ready for the ideas to make themselves known to you. When you prepare, the Muse arrives.

Yesterday I felt I should be drawing or practicing lettering, but sometimes the formality of it can be daunting. So I took the plastic wrap off of a cheap 2016 calendar I had bought for work and started doodling on the cardboard. Drawing on trash is freeing because it was going to be thrown away anyway. There’s no harm, no foul. And there’s absolutely no pressure to make anything good. I did some jaunty, silly doodle/lettering of my dog. I posted it on Instagram; not because I thought it was any good, but because I felt like sharing that it’s freeing to doodle on garbage. I certainly wasn’t looking for recognition. I was just having fun.

And that’s the kind of feeling I’m after every day. I just want to do something fun, even if meaningless, if it gets me into the mindset of creating. It takes the pressure off. Shouldn’t it be fun all the time? It doesn’t have to be useful or meaningful. It’s important to show up and practice. Just like it’s important for me to show up every day and not break the streak of writing. If you just do it all the time, it keeps fear and resistance at bay. There’s so much more room for better things to happen if you can get into enough of a groove that fear never has a chance to sneak in.

So go doodle on some garbage or write some gibberish. Have fun! And share it here, if you like. I look forward to seeing the results of your play time. 🙂

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