Let Your Muses Move Through You and Just Create

You have to make time for yourself to be creative

Wake Up and Write is a regular advice column from Moms Don’t Have Time to Write. Today, we have Alexandra Silber— Grammy-nominated singer, Broadway star, and author of memoir White Hot Grief Parade — who shared writing advice on the podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, hosted by Zibby Owens.

“Oh, sure, a couple of things.”

“Time comes to those who make it, not those who try to find it. I think that is absolutely how I’ve gotten so many things done. I’ve been disciplined. Discipline, though, doesn’t come from rigor. The best kind of discipline comes from really knowing what your values are and making a decision to do something versus simply wanting to.

If you’ve made the decision to eat healthy and lose weight, it’s a very different thing than simply wanting to. You make plans. You commit. You explore your soul about why. I encourage everyone to do that work.

Once you’ve made the decision and you make the time, just sit down and do it. The metaphor that I extended that to is if you take the trouble to put on your gym clothes and your shoes and go to the gym, if you walk into the gym, you’ll probably work out. If you go to church or the synagogue or the mosque or any place of worship, once you walk in, you’ll probably sit down and pray.

I think that by going to the place of creativity, you’re basically saying, ‘I’ve entered this holy space. I’m ready to engage with life in that way. May the muses move through me.’ But it can’t happen if you don’t do it.

All of that together is to say just make things. Don’t worry about what they become. They are things that are rapping on the window of your mind and heart and soul that want to be in the world and have asked you to be their birth canal. Don’t deny them.”

Listen to the episode:

https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/alexandrasilber?rq=Alexandra%20Silber

Buy the book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1681777649/?ref=exp_momsdonthavetimetoreadbooks_dp_vv_d