Musings on Muses from James W. Ziskin

Do you write from the heart, following your muse, not thinking about the reader at all; or do you write with the market in mind, thinking of the reader and how you can make the novel commercially successful; or somewhere in between? How would you advise an emerging author on this?

When I write, I never think about the market or what might sell. One look at my royalty statements will bear that out. And if I knew the secret to commercial success, I wouldn’t be wasting your time with this blog every two weeks. I’d be nose to the grindstone, working on a deadline to earn that seven-figure advance the publisher foolishly agreed to. 

But of course I wouldn’t want that. At least I wouldn’t sell my soul or write something I didn’t believe in to achieve it. And neither should any aspiring writer. Money is the wrong inspiration. Readers have a knack for seeing through such transparent motivation. And do you know why? Because insincerity has a knack for bleeding onto the page despite a writer’s best efforts to conceal it. If you don’t believe what you’re writing, no one else will. No, when I embark on a new project, I’m not thinking of anything beyond the task at hand, viz. squeezing the best story, finest characters, and perfectest words out of my head and onto the page. Like toothpaste from the tube.

But what about my original motivation? Before I began to write? Did I take market conditions—what was hot and selling—into consideration? Long ago I made the decision to write crime/mystery/thriller books and stories. Was that because there was a large audience for those genres? My answer is still no. If all I wanted was the largest pool of potential readers, I would have chosen to write romance novels. I don’t believe my choice of genre was mercenary at all. My dream was to write the kind of books I’d like to read. Creating compelling, entertaining stories was and is my motivation. Financial gain, though welcome, is gravy, not the main protein on my dish.

Okay, I don’t exactly write for the money. But do I have a muse? Sometimes I imagine an ideal reader when I write. It’s nice to have an audience, after all. No one likes to create solely for themselves. And we all need inspiration and encouragement. So for the sake of this week’s question, let’s call my muse Lucy. (She’s a she, since I’m a traditionalist when it comes to muses.) 

I can’t say Lucy is a constant presence as I write; she comes in and out of focus, sometimes when I need her most, other times when I least expect her to shimmer into view. When I’m in the so-called zone, writing fluidly and productively, I don’t have the time or the need to picture an ideal reader. But, just as ear worms and stray thoughts pop into our heads uninvited and unexpected, my Lucy appears when the mood strikes her. She pulls up a chair and reads along with me, breathing her warm breath on my neck just to remind me that I couldn’t possibly do this without her. She loves my work, which means she’s a muse of exquisite taste. I admire and share her opinions of my talents, of course. Did you expect me to have a muse who thought I was anything short of perfect? No way. Lucy reads everything I write with great attention and enthusiasm, gasping at my brilliant turns of phrase and twists of plot. She’s moved by the pathos and poignancy I conjure out of whole cloth as if by alchemy or outright sorcery. And she gushes about my dialogue tags. 

“Oh, Jim,” she gushes. “You write the BEST dialogue tags!”

I think she has a crush on me.

But who is Lucy, you ask. Hah! Dream on. She’s MY muse, and I’m not sharing. Go find your own damn muse and stop trying to steal mine.

And that’s my advice to emerging authors.

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