Courting the Muse: JeanMarie Olivieri

This week I’ve invited JeanMarie Olivieri to take the stand and tell us some of her thoughts on the creative process. Enjoy! –Leona

On Courting the Muse

A creative friend of mine gave me some advice about courting the Muse. She told me that to be creative, you must set tea out for the Muse every day. The Muse might come and visit you, or she might not; but you must make a welcome place for her, every day.

Having spent the summer in a non-productive creative slump, I made the decision a few weeks ago to “make tea.” I started by browsing my poetry file. I was surprised to find 13 unfinished poems. One or two showed real promise, some were nothing more than scraps. All in all, a good place to start with tea. I chose a promising little piece about the days of the week and finished shaping the first two stanzas quite easily. Then things got rough. I kept setting out tea; staring every day at the screen, trying to force the rest of it into the same clever rhyme scheme. Where was the Muse now?

Now let me say, I’m not married to rhyme. Most modern poetry, in fact, does not rhyme; and certainly I have many poems that don’t. However, rhyme is still a very useful way to create rhythm and beat, and set a tone for a poem. As long as there is music, there will be a place for rhyming poetry. But I had to ask myself if that place was in this particular poem.

One of the hardest things for a writer to do is to cut a favorite piece of work: a line of dialogue so sharp it sparkles like a diamond; a description of scenery so beautiful it makes you weep; a minor character so well drawn you’re considering making him the protagonist; the perfect rhyming stanza. Sometimes, for the greater good of the work, it has to be done. Cuts are easier, if still painful, when you have an editor red-lining your work. It’s a different story when your only editor is a Fliberty Jibbett of a Muse.

I stopped serving tea and began fighting the Muse. At one point, I held her down and beat her on the head. By golly I was going to make it work, with or without her! And eventually I did. Over a week into the process, in the middle of my nightly battle, I walked away from the computer in mid-sentence and lay down on my bed. Right away I resolved two lines of the poem. More important, I remembered that I was writing a poem to please myself and perhaps a few friends. I was not writing for the Harvard Review; at least not this time around.

Thinking back to my friend’s advice, I’ve decided that the next time I set tea out for the Muse, I will have a chat with her first about what I want to accomplish. Then again, perhaps I won’t. After all, nothing gets the blood pumping more than a good fight.

—

Jean Marie Olivieri is a single, unemployed technical writer who’s seeking a new career. When asked what she wants to do when she grows up, she said, “I have no idea. I’m just tired of geek speak, techno babble and editing SOPs from SMEs who can’t write a good grocery list.”

One of her short fiction pieces, “Pom and Circumstance”, may be found here.