Meeting Our Muses Day Three: Honour Your Inner Muse

As a writer, I've always been taught to say the hard things: those that make the blood rush out of my head. For writing to change lives, you have to dig into the viscera of your rawest self where the blood lives. I'm not suggesting we all manage to achieve that much. That's a job for the legends. The rest of us can only try, and we do try because we believe in the power of the written word to connect people and make the world less isolating.

In the Sixties, two women sat down to write about their insanity in more depth than anyone had before. Beyond their incredible talent, all Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton ever did was share parts of themselves society called taboo. At the time, people called them sensationalist and unethical for doing so, but now we’ve named a movement after them: Confessionism.

All these decades later, we still write about our lives because two poets opened the door. Sharing visceral secrets has become so integral to writing that we don’t even bother labelling it most of the time any more.

This week, we’ve been looking at how to find our muses. We’ve learned that nature, romance, and stillness can all act as inspiration, but we all have another important muse: Ourselves.

Your observations about the world around you are your muses.
The lessons you learn as you grow are your muses.
The details you’ve noticed in your inner world are your muses.
Your joy, power, and suffering are your muses.

When Dorothy walked the yellow brick road, she was in search of something she had all along: Her ruby slippers. She went in search of a wizard who could take her back home, only to find that she’d had the power all along. She just had to learn it for herself.

You, writer, have had the power all along.

Not all your inner truths are examples of greatness or suffering. Remember the Wizard of Oz was just a tiny guy behind a resounding voice. Not all your observations will be worthy of philosophy books, but they will add the timbre of authenticity to everything you write. You don’t have to discover the meaning of life in order to access your inner muse. You only have to observe and share the truth of this moment right here, no matter how insignificant it seems to you.

Today’s Prompt:

Write a confessionist poem about "the room of your life." Honour yourself.

The Room of My Life

• By Anne Sexton

Here,
in the room of my life
the objects keep changing.
Ashtrays to cry into,
the suffering brother of the wood walls,
the forty-eight keys of the typewriter
each an eyeball that is never shut,
the books, each a contestant in a beauty contest,
the black chair, a dog coffin made of Naugahyde,
the sockets on the wall
waiting like a cave of bees,
the gold rug
a conversation of heels and toes,
the fireplace
a knife waiting for someone to pick it up,
the sofa, exhausted with the exertion of a whore,
the phone
two flowers taking root in its crotch,
the doors
opening and closing like sea clams,
the lights
poking at me,
lighting up both the soil and the laugh.
The windows,
the starving windows
that drive the trees like nails into my heart.
Each day I feed the world out there
although birds explode
right and left.
I feed the world in here too,
offering the desk puppy biscuits.
However, nothing is just what it seems to be.
My objects dream and wear new costumes,
compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands
and the sea that bangs in my throat.