Pageturners: Meeting the Muse

Describing how you find your Muse in our mechanistic and cynical world is a tough one, ultimately because there isn’t a valid vocabulary to describe complex psychological, esoteric and contradictory.

Welcome to Pageturners, a book I’m writing in which I share what I’ve learnt – and am still learning – about comic writing, film writing, novel writing and how new writers can sell their stories. I’ll publish a chapter or a section per week, available for free here on Iconoblast. And I welcome your feedback or questions, so do leave a comment below!

Missed the Pageturners intro? Read it here.

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Illustration by David Broughton

Pageturners: Meeting The Muse

Describing how you find your Muse in our mechanistic and cynical world is a tough one, ultimately because there isn’t a valid vocabulary to describe complex  psychological, esoteric and contradictory notions. For instance, although I’m driven by the Muse, they’re not actually the stories I would choose to write. Not at all. She pushes me beyond my limits and even to the level of my own incompetence. Left to my own devices, I would happily, comfortably – and, perhaps, lazily – write mostly female-orientated fiction, mystery, occult  and psychological thrillers. It all comes very easily to me and gives me plenty of time for a life outside writing. Hence my background as a successful girls comic writer. But the Muse has other ideas and I would say has thwarted that particular safe and easy path. So I see the Muse as a force that’s separate to – and on occasion is in conflict with – myself. 

Also, we’re all rather wary of acknowledging our internal dialogue or what Christians might even see as ‘possession’. Some fundamentalists call our inner voice the voice of the devil. Psychologists might regard it as a disorder. Because we are socially conditioned to believe that the answers lie outside ourselves – in ‘religions of the book’ (the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud) or in the wisdom of psychology or even psychiatry – rather than within ourselves. The Gnostic – self knowledge – path is rarely encouraged or chronicled today. People tend to make an exception with the inner voice of writers or artists. Our eccentricity is largely considered okay or at least tolerated. But anyone else is likely to be seen as very peculiar and runs the risk of being locked up if they talk about inner drives and inner voices. Even so, it is the basis of our intuition and so much more.

To find your Muse, you simply have to take plenty of  time out to focus on her (she is female by definition) and to listen to what she has to say. Rest assured, she will find you. It doesn’t have to be strange or magical, if that makes you uncomfortable. Chances are she’ll introduce herself in a way that you’re okay with. And I promise you, she will give you a clearer sense of your writing direction and inspiration than any number of writers’ self-help books and articles. Including this one.

I’ve heard successful authors talk about how they struggled through numerous drafts over several years before they were happy with their final book. I would suggest this was because they weren’t totally in touch with their Muse and following her directions. They might not even be aware of, or have any interest, in her, believing that the story came from within themselves and not from some external force. But recognising and acknowledging the power of the Muse really does speed up the writing process.

In my case, back in the 90s, I did some rather esoteric ‘trance work’ on my own and with occult friends and I got to meet my Muse in a very real way. But this is a book on the art and craft of writing, and not an esoteric memoir, so I won’t elaborate on it in any detail. In Christian terms, it would probably be described as ‘possession’. In New Age terms, it would be called ‘channelling’ – although the experience was far from ‘pink and fluffy’. I dread to think what a psychologist would call it. Some form of temporary delusion, perhaps. I don’t think any of those terms fits what happened, and, like I say, this isn’t the place to debate it.

Art by Kevin O’Neill

What is relevant, however, is that she introduced herself with the surprising and rather challenging words, ‘I’m not a writer. I’m a poisoner.’

That really wasn’t what I wanted to hear. This was certainly no wish fulfilment fantasy. The term ‘poisoner’, I subsequently discovered, is a biblical one and was a common term for witches in the Middle Ages. The original line in the Bible is actually, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live.’ Not ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’

It was an emotional experience, which later formed the basis of two very successful talks I gave at London’s Psychic Questing Conferences. I described  how the Muse compelled me to visit  some powerful esoteric locations in Southern France. The experience convinced me the Muse was objectively real, rather than a subjective fancy. I was invited to give further talks, but I stopped, because I didn’t want to turn a very personal and emotional event into a floorshow.

But it certainly inspired my writing and produced several stories: Sha, a three-volume series with artist Olivier Ledroit, published by Editions Soleil/Delcourt.  Torturer, with artist John Hicklenton, published by German punk publisher Extreme (from the band  Die Ärzte). Black Siddha (Judge Dredd Megazine) with artist Simon Davis. Plus Dave Maudling’s ghostly mother (Muse) in Read ‘em and Weep. So, if you follow your Muse, chances are she’ll keep you busy.

More significantly, the Muse’s statement made sense of my story direction, which had often baffled and even concerned me from time to time. Why I had to create comics like Action and 2000AD. Why my stories were so strongly anti-establishment. Why I was never drawn to ‘normal’ stories, which are so much easier and safer to write. Why, at the time of the ‘British invasion of American comics’, I turned down several opportunities to write superhero stories, which all my peers were doing and were clearly more financially rewarding than British comics. Why I loathed the very idea of writing superheroes. Why, when I wrote ‘straight’ stories, devoid of my usual seditious subtext, they invariably and mysteriously failed.

It was because they were not my path. It was a relief to understand this. ‘Poisoner’, for me, means a writer of sedition. A whistleblower on society. Witches, practitioners of the old peasant religion, were the traditional enemy of the oppressors of the ordinary people, the Christian ruling elite responsible for the mass-murder of the Burning Times in early modern Europe. My Muse sees the rulers of today’s society as the inheritors of that elite. They are the Adversary,  ‘the other side’. 

I’d love to know more about how and why Muses work and what they really are. But I suspect everyone’s meeting with their Muse will be different. I don’t think modern society has the correct vocabulary to identify and describe the internal psychological forces that secretly motivate so many of us. In fact, I don’t think it has any positive vocabulary for them, at all. What I’ve just related would normally be dismissed as a ‘complex delusional system by someone with an over-active imagination’. Any objective evidence  – and there is some – would be dismissed or ignored. Pretending the Muse doesn’t exist as a force or an entity, recognised and personified from at least the time of Ancient Greece as the inspirational goddesses of literature, science and the arts, is what one might expect from today’s gatekeepers, who believe they are so much wiser than our ancestors. 

Normally, the gatekeepers will have a psychological explanation such as dissociative identity disorder, possibly triggered by trauma. But it doesn’t hold up nearly so well as an explanation for writer and artists’ inspiration. My inspiration certainly didn’t come from family, trauma or school. My inspiration to write came from somewhere else, completely unknown to me, and I was mainly self-taught. I submitted my first story to BBC radio when I was ten years old, and even then I felt I was running late and should have written it when I was nine. My Muse was clearly in a hurry.

Whether your Muse takes on a personality, or remains in the shadows of your mind as a nagging need to create, she is out there waiting to meet you, probably in some unique guise. The only skill needed to find her is to listen to her. But it probably won’t happen in a blinding flash, I’m afraid. That’s far too ‘Hollywood’, alas. It’s a process that could take a few dedicated months, at least. That was my experience. That can be tough when there are so many distractions and demands from family, work and friends that make communion with the unknown seem highly indulgent. But that’s a choice you have to make. The benefits for me I’ve just described. Top of the list would be peace of mind. I’m no longer working for comics that don’t reflect the values that are dear to me. Or publishers who have no respect for creatives. I know exactly where I’m going and what I’m trying to achieve in my work. 

Your Muse may not be ‘subversive’ like mine. It may well have an entirely different and safer agenda that will find favour with the gatekeepers – in which case I truly envy you. You’re in for a much easier time. Consider P.G. Wodehouse, who wrote those wonderful, happy Jeeves stories, decade in, decade out. Assuming Wodehouse was driven by the Muse to write them – to entertain people and just make them laugh – he had a much easier gig than most writers.  By comparison, mine is demanding, single-minded and intolerant of the Adversary. To put it mildly! 

For my Muse, words have no value in and of themselves, they’re only useful as a tool for sedition. Hence why she tells me, ‘I’m not a writer.’ Of course I’m the one who lives in the real world and have to string the sentences together, but it’s fair to say that beautiful prose has little interest for her. She generally sees it as ‘purple’ and as something that often gets in the way of subtext. In this view she is not alone – Orwell’s rules of writing include: ‘Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.’  

My Action comic appealed strongly to the Muse. Inspired by her, I based the layout of Action on the layout of The Sun newspaper. Play the Adversary at their own game, I/the Muse chuckled to my/herself. 

No scene sums up the character of my Muse and how she feels about the Adversary better than this example from Read Em and Weep. It’s written with Kevin O’Neill, who must have had a kindred spirit to my Muse. Hence our various collaborations.

We join Dave as he’s being interviewed on live television by Quentin Cowley of Newshound. Quentin prefers the middle-class educational magazine Homework  to Aaagh! (the comic of the streets).

Quentin  held up the number one issue of Homework. The free gift was still attached to the front: a plastic protractor. There were cover lines on the magazine. ‘Make your own school report. How to revise over Christmas.’

‘Let’s compare it with a periodical that reinforced moral values,’ said Quentin. ‘This is the number one issue of Homework that I swopped with a young viewer for a Newshound reporter’s clipboard.’

Quentin went through its glossy pages. ‘A magazine every responsible parent recommended. It was rich in mentally nourishing ideas.’ He carefully enunciated every word, as if he was talking to the deaf. ‘A paper university.’

‘I remember it well.’ said Dave. “Treasure Island in Latin begins inside.”’

…Quentin picked up the copy of Aaagh! again. ‘It compares with this appalling, illiterate, juvenile delinquent comic that has been pumping out its vile content, like raw sewage, onto the children of Britain.’

‘A simple “I don’t like it” would suffice,’ said Dave.

Quentin flicked through the comic and stopped at an image of a furious Black Hammer attacking racist thugs on the terraces. ‘A comic that actually encourages soccer hooliganism,’ he announced.

That was it. Criticising the Black Hammer. His hero. Dave bit through his liquorice pipe.

Quentin held the comic up for the cameras. ‘On behalf of all responsible parents, I feel a duty to do this to your disgraceful publication.’ He tore Aaagh! in half.

‘I see,’ said Dave.

He picked up the copy of Homework. ‘On behalf of the bored kids of Britain, I’d like to do this.’

To Quentin’s horror, he ripped the collector’s item in half. ‘Goodbye, “Boyhood of Patrick Moore”. Goodbye “Cecil Rhodes, Africa’s Saviour.” Goodbye “Cutaway of a stapler”.’

…Dave quoted imaginary scenes from Homework as he continued to rip it to pieces. ‘Goodbye “Your Royal Betters”… “How the Bible was brought to hotels – a drawer-by-drawer guide”… “Africa: lining your pockets made easy. How to strip-mine a country. What every boy should know.”’

   ‘You ignorant oaf!’ snarled a livid Quentin and took a savage swing at Dave. 

All this keeps my Muse very happy.  Finding – or rather recognising – your Muse gives you tremendous creative energy, a strong sense of purpose and direction.

If you have no luck finding her, don’t worry, there’s another way that could bring her out into the open that I’ll talk about next time: Collaborations.

All creators are driven by a Muse. Would you agree? Where does your creativity come from? If it feels like it’s from somewhere outside yourself or your usual way of thinking, then that’s the Muse.

Love to hear your story about your Muse!

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