20140116.0725

There are days I sit in front of my computer to write in this webspace (or in other webspaces or in documents that are far from being webspaces) and words flow freely.  I will not say that the stream is always clear and pure (the metaphor of text as fluid again), and I know well that it is not always wholesome, but it flows.  But there are days when I sit down to write, and it is as though the pipes are clogged.  They permit no outflow, or perhaps only a trickle, a rivulet strained and made dirty by seeping through congealed grease and matted hair and decaying proteins best left unexamined (and I seem not to be able to avoid the scatological).

In such circumstances, I am tempted not to write.  I am tempted to fall back on the old conceit that the Muse comes when she will, and until she comes, there is no sense in my trying to write.  "I have to be inspired to write," whines the annoying little jerk voice within me that wants me to not, a voice a much more popular netizen than I calls The Blerch.  (I do not always agree with The Oatmeal, but it is good reading even so.  And The Blerch is a good concept, little bastard that he is.)  "Things have to be right or it won't work."  It is a refrain I have heard from students any number of times; "I just couldn't get it going.  It didn't feel right."

You should know where this is going.

It is true that the Muse comes when she will.  It is also true that getting any given woman to come often takes dedicated effort on the part of those who want her to come.  Sometimes it does not work, admittedly; the mood does have to be right and the circumstances sufficiently relaxed or otherwise suited to her, and even then, other things can intervene.  But that does not mean that the effort ought not to be expended, that hands and tongue ought not to be bent toward the goal of making the Muse come.  And when the effort does induce the Muse to come, there is a joyous outpouring that is itself quite stimulating, one that in my case often promotes something cylindrical to send out streams of fluid of its own.

I am a more skillful lover of my Muse than to simply quit when the response I seek is not immediately given.  Instead, I work at it until I can work no longer, until hands cramp and tongue will flap no longer--or until my Muse comes and I can enjoy her having come from my efforts, as I have noted before.  So it is that even in such circumstances as those with which I began to write today, I do not turn away but labor on.  Really, even if the Muse does not come in response to my efforts, she appreciates them, and I still have some reward.