Hm.... I think some people tend to read highly individual muses as either sort of pretentious or sort of insane. Like- these people don't really talk in your head, you're just using them as a device to clarify your own thoughts! Don't take this pretense too far, or else you're either a) confused about where your mind ends and the 'real world' begins, or b) pretending you are (a) because you think it makes you an obsessed-but-cool-because-of-it writer.
Driven by the muse, right? But sometimes people who don't have muses, who just kind of write from wherever, tend to think it's either fake- that people are pretending to have muses but really muddle along like everyone else- or crazy/stupid/silly, because, honestly, you are you are you, totally separate people do not exist in your head.
I don't have muses, although I'm not, uh, squicked by people who do. It seems like a good deal to me, actually- free dialogue- but characters have never internalized enough for me to feel comfortable with them outside a narrative context. It's why I can't write fic well, natch.
*thoughtful nod* I suppose there is a pretty strong cultural prescription that we should distrust the accounts of people who say their reality includes things that other people can't see/hear/touch. So that an initial response of "I don't do that" slides that much more easily into "that can't be possible/right".
Though, by that scale, we should think all theoretical physicists are quite insane. Food for thought.
Rethinking this, there might be another aspect to people disliking individualized (versus character-type) muses- they're so damn personal. Looking at it that way... it is a kind of squick to read strangers going into a lot of detail about what personally inspires them; it seems too intimate to me. On some level, a muse will be a reflection/distortion of some essential aspect of yourself.
As ever, though, if you're squicked by it, why read it? Which sometimes seems like the fundamental question of the internet.
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branchandroot) wrote2005-04-27 05:05 pm
muddling attempt at explanation
Hm.... I think some people tend to read highly individual muses as either sort of pretentious or sort of insane. Like- these people don't really talk in your head, you're just using them as a device to clarify your own thoughts! Don't take this pretense too far, or else you're either a) confused about where your mind ends and the 'real world' begins, or b) pretending you are (a) because you think it makes you an obsessed-but-cool-because-of-it writer.
Driven by the muse, right? But sometimes people who don't have muses, who just kind of write from wherever, tend to think it's either fake- that people are pretending to have muses but really muddle along like everyone else- or crazy/stupid/silly, because, honestly, you are you are you, totally separate people do not exist in your head.
I don't have muses, although I'm not, uh, squicked by people who do. It seems like a good deal to me, actually- free dialogue- but characters have never internalized enough for me to feel comfortable with them outside a narrative context. It's why I can't write fic well, natch.
Re: muddling attempt at explanation
Though, by that scale, we should think all theoretical physicists are quite insane. Food for thought.
Re: muddling attempt at explanation
As ever, though, if you're squicked by it, why read it? Which sometimes seems like the fundamental question of the internet.