Dear Writer: A Love Letter From Your Muse
Or How to Seduce Your Muse
I want flowers, candles, a clean working space free from the smell of cat shit and piss. I want the beauty of Venus, the carved marble realm of refinement, but not the refinement of culture and civilization and sophistication, those can be nice touches. What I want is to be ordained by the ordinary.
Sit down every day. It doesn’t matter the time or the place as long as you show up and look your life in the eye. Before you touch the page, gaze at something. Gaze at something in your everyday life, your everyday reality, as if you are seeing it for the first time. As if you have never known it.
Look at the first thing that catches your eye and just see it. See the truth of its creation gazing back at you, and then before you begin willy-nilly with the writing, let the beauty in and feel it within you. This will open the door to your power, your uninterrupted flow, the unconditional acceptance of every aspect of your life. This is how you touch the detail. The minutia that tells the truth.
If you can begin each writing session, no matter the day or time or place with that felt sense of external thing turned into internal awe, you will never have to fear the block, the doubt, the hesitations, the impotence, or distractions again.
There is no need for any kind of pressure here. What you are doing is preparing the ground for moving me to the center of your tongue. For I am your voice. I am your eyes, I am your ears, your soul, your spirit. I am the one who chooses to be here at this time, in your skin, wedded to your one, precious, unique life. I choose to walk into the hell realms of human experience so you can find a name for heaven.
If I cannot moan into the full freedom to say whatever it is I need and want to say, then I will be contorted. Frustrated. I will be compressed and you will feel me pressing against your insides like a ton of bricks, a heaviness that will smother and suffocate you with the force of repression. Ocean. You will drown under the weight of me.
I know you will creep in and try to control things. That’s ok, I allow for that. I expect that. I love you for that. But when you feel the compression and the tightness and the strain, take those as indications that you’ve come in too strong or too rigidly to allow the climax of truth. Take that as an indicator that your mind or ego has become too concerned with what you are saying and how you’re saying it, and you’ve blocked your own raw flow.
In these times, just pause, take a breath, let the friction build, keep moving through it while feeling the controller. Or step away, do some jumping jacks and smack your feet against the cool pavement of your street. Whatever you have to do to get back into your body. Come back to pure play creation. Pull out your drum, pick up your guitar, draw a mandala, make a new altar.
And if for some reason you miss a day of writing, do not beat yourself up. I will never leave. I am your primal tension. I will not disappear if you have to go away or take a weekend off. But what you cannot do is fall into the trap of thinking that because you missed a day, you are a failure. That is to undermine the work we have done, the understanding of your grace that you have laced into each trepid word that you’ve caressed out of me. The belief of failure is what brings you back to square one, not the missed session of writing. This whole endeavor, even a book itself, is a process of loving kindness.
So to be clear. To seduce me you must be completely honest. And this means not trying to hide what it is you need to say. Refinement will come once the words are out. I must have a plenty of room to fall all over myself. My resilience is the beauty of you pausing to name the miraculously ordinary substance of your life. A clean room helps, a tidy desk is nice, a fragrant smelling rose, a lit candle, sunshine, a window, hot tea, all those things are nice, all those things can help, but they are not necessary. Sometimes the smell of cat shit might be just the thing for you to appreciate the way the sour air envelops you. Sometimes the messy desk might open you up to appreciate the clean, smooth, blank page. It doesn’t matter.
Scooping the litter can be part of the routine, boiling the kettle, or clearing the desk, so be it. I will adapt and understand that you are making your way to me through ritual. I understand how hard it is to sit down and arrive here with me. That is why I wait. I will always come when you make room for me.
And remember, you are always supported. Your work here is solitary. You do it alone, yet you cannot do it alone. The world sources your material. The earth always rises to meet your feet. Each word will lead you to the next.
My Dear Writer, you are a warrior of the most sacred kind. You are whole, you are all that is ever necessary. You are enough. You already know what you need to know. Yes, sometimes you need reminders. You need the support of the external world reflecting back to you the unconditional love of seeing you just as you are, but your power really comes from within you, through you and there are a million ways to get there.
Doubt and fear are a necessary part of this realm. They change and you are changing with them. They are never the truth of who you really are. You might slip toward the edge of fissure, of dissolve, of the scream of the dying ego, but you are the ground and have the capacity to meet, hold, and name all of it.
You hold a civilization on your tongue.
You are loved dearly and there is nothing else you need to do. Just Be. Just Be yourself, allow, and for goodness sake, write if you want to write.
Witnessing you follow your own desire is the ultimate seduction. When you do, I will come, every time.
I invite you to go deep into your writing and use writing to communicate what’s written on your soul and bring it alive into the world in my upcoming,
Written on Your Soul, 5-day residential writing retreat happening October 8–13th in New Mexico.
Click here to find out more and apply.
I also invite you to Click here to get your get your One Word Can Set You Free Guide as my gift to you, so you can write what wants to be written. The world is waiting for your words.


