“I’m not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.”

~ Ray Bradbury

Okay, God. What gives? I’ve been patiently awaiting my writing miracle, and You’re surprisingly quiet. Is there something I’m missing? Some ritual or mantra or prayer that unlocks the muse?

Liz Gilbert, a two-time guest on my Beautiful Writers Podcast, brilliantly explained in her TED Talk “Your Elusive Creative Genius” that artists since the dawn of time have ascribed their creative mastery to a power greater than themselves. If you’re struggling to come up with something awe-inspiring, is it solely up to you? Surely a person can’t be penalized if their snoozy muse is asleep on the job! And if divine inspiration is real, it begs the question: How can we mere mortals gain favor from the gods?

Libraries are filled with books written by authors who beseeched the heavens and their muse to give them inspiration, protection, and compensation. There isn’t a writer alive who doesn’t want their creative endeavors to carry on when the honeymoon phase inevitably ends. That’s when many of us call in the big guns: God, Allah, Oneness, Source, Fruity Skittles, the Universe, you name it.

Why not take the lead and kick your own butt into gear? Set up a writing schedule that works for you, and maybe use my coming example to take risks when networking with others who can fast-track your journey while you perform your rituals and say your prayers, if you choose. That way, if no One appears to deliver the secret codes, you’re still writing and taking action—which, remember, creates momentum.

Regardless of where beautiful writing originates (a force outside of us or an inside job), I believe in the magic without and within, between my ears and inside my God-given heart (and, uh, um, caffeine). Then I hug a few trees and beg Mother Nature too. You know, just in case.

Jesse, on the other hand, being an actor, took a more dramatic approach.

Tosh was playing at a friend’s house when the phone rang. It was the call we’d been waiting for: Jesse’s manager had news about a screen test he’d done at NBC for a new love interest on The Young and the Restless. I ran to Jesse’s side. He leaned down so my ear was close to the receiver.

“They adore you,” his manager said. “You killed it in there. But they’ve given the part to a bigger name. I’m so sorry.”

Jesse hung his head and began to weep. I sat by quietly, knowing this would take time. They’d already negotiated the money for this starring role. We were days from living on Easy Street, at least for a contractually guaranteed three years. Soon Jesse’s face grew crimson with anger.

“Okay, God. What the hell’s going on? Do I have a target on my chest that says, ‘Fuck me’? Nothing, and I mean nothing, has worked out for me lately, and I don’t deserve this!” Jesse was yelling now. “I’ve been a good man. A good father. A good husband. I provide for my family, or so I try, but You keep fucking with me!”

“Jesse! Stop,” I said. “You can’t scream at God like that! You’re going to get hit by a downed power line or crushed by falling bricks.”

“Fucking town! Fucking Hollywood! Fucking God!” Jesse screamed.

“Babe!” I yelled back, bordering on hysteria. We’d been slammed hard recently—Jesse had barely lived through a bout of peritonitis, a result of a burst appendix. He died on the operating table before coming back to life and hadn’t worked in months. “Do you want things to get worse?”

Jesse shook his fist at the ceiling. “I don’t deserve this! I don’t deserve to lose my career! I didn’t deserve to nearly lose my life. And, what the fuck has Linda done? She really doesn’t deserve this crap!” Okay, that’s better. I made the sign of the cross over my chest as Jesse’s tirade slammed on.

“Never mind. I don’t give a fuck what You think, God. Enough! I have dominion over my life, and I want it to change now. I want fun. Give me fun! I want some FUCKING FUN this goddamned minute!”

“Are you done yet?” I asked, scanning the skies for lightning bolts.

“Yeah, I’m done. Fuck it.” He walked into our bedroom, flopped onto our mattress, and fell into a fitful sleep. Two hours later, just as Jesse was beginning to stir, my cell phone rang.

“Lin? It’s Randi!” I could hear static, telling me she was overseas. We’d met the dark-eyed, long-legged beauty in St. Martin when she and Jesse and Leeza’s husband acted together for the soap opera.

“How the heck are you?” I asked. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Milan. Just finished a modeling shoot. On a yacht.” She laughed. “Girrrl, you’d flip if you could see my life. That’s why I’m calling.”

“So, life’s still beautiful?” It had been nothing but since the Philadelphia native, Randi Ingerman, had moved to Italy. With her buxom bosom and waistline the circumference of my wrist, Randi had learned Italian and become a pinup model and movie and TV star. I called her The Rome Madonna.

“Yes! Ridiculously beautiful. And it’s about to get more so for the two of you as well. Pack your bags. I’m flying you to Miami. We’re going on an all-expenses-paid, nine-day Caribbean cruise. I’m christening a new luxury liner. You’ll act as my assistant for an hour. Carry a clipboard; take one page of notes. That’s it. I’ve already reserved your stateroom. It’s about time you guys had that honeymoon you never got. You deserve some fucking fun, am I right?”

So, yeah. That was mind-blowing. An Italian pastry cruise, if you can believe that. Between the bomboloni for breakfast and the tiramisu, cannoli, and brioche buffet at midnight on the upper deck—gotta love those Italians—Jesse and I both gained eleven pounds.

Anita Moorjani

After my near-death experience, I realized that our soul is made purely of energy, and that we’re predominantly souls more than physical bodies. We act like we’re physical beings, but our physical self is only the tip of an iceberg. Our real self, our soul, is our energy being. When you believe that you are just this physical being, you bend yourself out of shape, like a pretzel, to try and fit in to please other people.

But when I crossed over, I realized we all are huge spiritual beings. Our soul is powerful and has a purpose. “Wow! This is much bigger than anything I could ever imagine!” I wished everybody knew this about themselves.

When you’re living from this place, you become guided. When you think you’re a little physical being, you think you have to run around physically worrying about this and that and changing this and changing that. We put all this burden on the shoulders of this little physical body that is scared and running around trying to change the world. This physical body starts to get worn down because this little physical person is afraid. But when you live from the soul, you have a very different perspective. You stay guided.

Paul Williams

The first job I got when I was newly sober was to write the words and music for The Muppet Christmas Carol. It was the perfect job for me. It’s about a man’s spiritual awakening. In some ways, I was Scrooge.

Disney wanted the first number to be Scrooge’s “I Am” song. The doors open. We see Michael Caine’s feet as Scrooge, walking through mud and splashing water and snow. Little creatures get colder as he passes.

I went out, took my tape recorder and a piece of paper and a pencil. I’d read Dickens’s original and the script. I sat in the park and said, “Big Amigo, you know what this song needs to be about. All these amazing forces up there somewhere are in and out and around me and within me. Let me know when you have an idea.”

I picked up a bloody mystery and started reading. About three pages in, I set it down, not thinking about what I was supposed to do. I went, “Okay. You see his feet. He’s walking . . .”

Then the lyrics poured out of me: When a cold wind blows, it chills you, chills you to the bone. But there’s nothing in nature that freezes your heart like years of being alone. I couldn’t write it fast enough. I had no conscious connection to the process beyond the fact that my subconscious was on it. Just as you try to remember a name—everybody can relate to this—you’re trying to remember a name. You can’t think of his name. He’s been your favorite actor for your entire goddamned life. Why can’t I remember his name? All of a sudden, you’re in the shower, you’re in bed in the middle of the night, and boom! It pops to the surface. Who did that work? Who went through all those filing cabinets up there looking for the name? And you go, “Oh my God! Arthur Hunnicutt!”

That magical, mystical power my wonderful composer friend Richard Bellis says we mistake for procrastination is “percolation.” It’s not procrastinating! You get a job to do, you avoid it, you avoid it, you avoid it, and you’ve got four hours until you have to turn it in. You sit down, and it pours out of you. Why? What’s been happening? It’s been percolating. Those guys upstairs have been doing the work!

Anne Lamott

Thirty years ago, I used to wake up and go, “Oh, God, it’s so hopeless, I’m so sick.” And now I wake up, and I say to God, “Hi!” And then I offer myself to God to use me and do with me as He or She chooses.

And I pray not to be such a big whiny baby. I know a few people who are in dire medical emergencies. I lift them up for perfect healing—whatever their destiny is. And then usually around that time, my grandson has crawled into bed with me. And he starts shaking me because he doesn’t know I’m praying. He thinks I’m sleeping and that I should get up and start discussing his plans for the day and what he would like for breakfast.

So, I have kind of “life on life’s terms” prayers. I pray all day, every day. I mostly pray, “Help. Thanks! Wow!” And I pray to stop being such a whiny baby.

Despite how well that worked, telling God to go fuck Himself, I never saw Jesse tempt fate in that way again. My friend Rhonda Britten later said he’d indeed summoned the power of the Universe by finally committing 100 percent to himself at that moment, but future prayers needn’t be so heretical. As for me, I stuck to sage lighting and dream seeding.

Just as I was about to overturn couch cushions in search of coins, Jess was hired as the face of a major American car company in six states. Oh my God! We can pay our bills! I leaped into Jesse’s arms, and we both cried. This wouldn’t be Richie Rich money, but it would afford us time—maybe a year, possibly more—for me to write without getting another job and space for him to continue to be a guilt-free, mostly stay-at-home dad and SportsCenter aficionado. Of course, I’d be a wealthy author one day, able to step in and repay the favor by taking care of us when his car gig ended. Because even in the Land of Make-Believe, every good gig comes to a close.

That night I had my first interviewee dream. I was sitting across from Robert Wyland, the environmentalist and whale muralist listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for creating the largest mural in history. Jesse and I had stumbled into Wyland’s Laguna Beach gallery the previous summer on an uncommon day trip to the ocean and had stood in awe of his creations.

“That guy’s dope, but is he famous enough to help you get a book deal?” Jesse asked, seeing the letter I’d just typed up to Wyland’s publicist.

Ahh. The question I’d been dreading: Would my interviewees be hot enough? God forbid I pick anyone in the B-, C-, or dreaded D-list category, despite their wisdom and experience. I’d already imagined this concern echoed in future publishing conversations and could feel my defenses rising.

“True, Wyland’s not a household name,” I said. “But that only makes him more deserving of being highlighted!” I’d just learned of his audacious goal to paint a hundred life-size marine murals on skyscrapers, sports arenas, and massive structures across the globe. “With his Whaling Walls, he’s spreading awareness of the fragility that lies beneath our waters,” I continued. “He should get all the press possible!”

Jesse got it, but I knew others wouldn’t, and we were short on time. Back at USC in 1984, my environmental engineering textbook warned of the “50 reasons the oceans would be dead in 50 years.” That was ten years ago already! We desperately needed to throw a little light on this brush-wielding visionary, who, by the way, rocked some movie-star good looks as well.

I proofed my “Pick me, pick me!” pitch and faxed my request. Planet Earth required whale-sized warriors, and Wyland’s mission was galactic. But they turned me down. Was it because I was a nobody? Probably, but there was no getting around that fact just yet. I knew what I wanted—hot whale guy in the pages of my book, healing vibes to the seven seas and beyond. But what did Wyland want? Everyone, no matter how high up on the celebrity food chain, has goals. Help them reach theirs, I figured, and we’d feast together.

When in doubt, research! I discovered that Wyland had a foundation, one that educated schoolkids to be better stewards of the oceans. I went to bed awed with a prayer on my lips: “If there’s something I can do to get Wyland to do the interview, please tell me what it is.” When I woke up, the introduction for Wyland’s future chapter in my book—all three pages of it—was parked in the white space of my mind. I just had to bring it into physical form.

I raced to get it down before saying a quick prayer to Mama Earth and Tosh’s latest crush, Ariel (who’s to say little mermaids don’t have big pull?). I pushed REDIAL on the fax machine, and bam! My ode to Wyland’s environmental heroics was the lure that, once cast, landed my big fish. He said YES! Our lunch interview in Laguna was set for the following week. Once again, my brain or guardian angels—something seemingly tapped in—was telling me what to do. When I followed those instructions, I found myself floating in flow.

“It’s the craziest thing, but many times when I’m painting a mural,” Wyland said, looking out on the crashing surf from our table, “I turn around and see a whale or dolphin raised up out of the water watching me paint.” The crack in his voice and the faraway look in his aqua sky-blue eyes made me see it too. I put my fork down, speechless.

“I know there’s nothing I can ever do with my life that would make me feel more connected,” he continued.*

Yeah. I know the feeling. Nothing made me feel as alive as having these chats. I felt as if I was deeply connected to my life’s mission, and I prayed that with time I would be as courageous as my interviewees. How was it that when Wyland and others got “the call” to do their work in the world, they answered with their whole being? Where did they get their belief? Their stamina? The sheer daily commitment to keep showing up? Would I have similar staying power? Please, God.

Van Jones

It’s a mystery. We could all just be trapped in some virtual reality game, and we might be some totally other alien species. Who knows?

It seems that humans tend to have some awareness of something beyond our immediate five senses and can find meaning and comfort and even direction. Whether it’s called faith or intuition or the muse, I find the more space I give that in my life, the better my life gets. And I find the less space I give that in my life, the worse my life gets.

For me, without being a fundamentalist or anything like that, I can just say what works for me. When I open my heart and myself up to a deeper purpose, better words come out, and those words are of more use.

I think the other side of that is having something to say. That took longer because it’s a crowded field of young African Americans whose parents came through civil rights and who want to make the world a better place. Putting in ten or fifteen years of work and coming out with some novel ideas about the workforce, about green energy, that kind of gave me something to say. And then leaving the White House and working at CNN and with Newt Gingrich and with Prince and President Obama—that has all given me something else to say.

Steven Pressfield

Early in my career, I went through a really rough time. I came out of it by saying to the Muse: “Okay. I’ll follow you. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.” I believe completely that if you pay attention to her, the Muse, she keeps coming around. And if you don’t, she’s pissed off. Like most women, it’s about attention.

I always say that the Muse is the only female in my life that I’ve always been faithful to and the only one who’s always been faithful to me.

A writer, or any artist, serves the Muse. That’s why you can’t command the Muse; you can only invoke her. Do you know what kite surfing is, where you have a kind of parasail above you, and you surf along the water with lines going up to this parachute above? I feel like we, as writers, we’re on the surfboard down on the surface of the water. But there are lines extending above us, and the power is coming down from that. When the wind hits that sail, hits that kite, it pulls us. If we look at this from the inside out of a writer’s career, or a singer’s career . . . you’re going to have a body of work. One album is going to follow another and another. I see those as Muse-driven projects. When I finish one, I ask partly what it is that I want to do next, but also what do you, the Muse, want me to do next?

I believe we’re all born with a destiny. There are the works we’re put on this earth to write as writers. I think that if the Muse is flying overhead looking down and sees somebody with that attitude, she’s very happy because that’s what she wants. She’s asking: Is this person a true servant of mine? I think the way you best court the Muse is by being willing to do whatever it takes to do your work. To not be distracted. Keep going no matter what.

Thankfully, the Universe continued gifting me pearls. I was still hush-hush about my writing, though. Mainly to safeguard my growing but still delicate belief I could pull this off. Except, one day, a friend of a friend came over and without knowing a thing about her other than that her jeans were organic, and that we each made homemade almond milk for our kids, my gut kept saying, Tell her about your book! So, I did. A week later, at her insistence, she introduced me to Pierce Brosnan and his soon-to-be wife, Keely Shaye Smith.

At the Brosnan beach house in Malibu, the crashing surf and cawing seagulls were nearly as distracting as the actual movie star in the house—James Bond! I was swept up into devastating, 007-worthy firsthand stories of real-life ocean activism on a scale I’d only imagined might exist. I nearly threw up when Pierce and Keely played film footage for me taken by their friend from a hidden camera on a fishing vessel documenting the massacre of dolphins en masse. (Schools of tuna often swim under pods of dolphins, leading to all sorts of excruciating, high-stakes tragedy.)

Pierce and Keely worked tirelessly—and successfully—to get Congress to establish dolphin-safe fishing laws, resulting in the 1990 Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act. They also helped halt the construction of a salt factory on the banks of the San Ignacio Lagoon, one of the last gray whale breeding and calving spots on Earth. (And in 2016, the Brosnans produced Poisoning Paradise, an award-winning documentary that exposed the experimental toxic test sites where dangerous pesticides are sprayed unchecked and upwind of vulnerable neighborhoods in Hawaii.)

Keely’s smarts and courage energized me. With each new interview, my love for champions in the environmental trenches grew, further fueling my why and my mission to keep scripting stories affecting the flora and fauna that couldn’t speak for themselves.

Marianne Williamson

I dedicate what I’m writing to God, which means to love—that it might be of service, that it might be of use. I think we heal in life one a-ha at a time. That’s every writer’s hope—that there’s going to be an a-ha in something you wrote.

Whenever I hear all that stuff we’re “supposed to do” to be successful, my advice is to ignore it. Go into the peace of your heart, meditate, pray, and ask for guidance. Then, yes, listen to experts. But they will be your consultants. The deepest decision-making will be from that still, small voice within that you will hear in the silence of your heart.

That is the creative process! The same place you go to find the right word to say, or the right word to write, or the right color to paint. It’s the same place to go to when deciding to promote your book or whatever. It’s all sacred. As Einstein said, “Either everything is a miracle, or nothing is a miracle.”

Leeza Gibbons

I repeat my mother’s advice to me, which is to show up, do your best, and let go of the rest—with faith that God is working with you and through you.

I always used to have music playing when I walked out to meet the audience on my talk show. It made it easy for me to do the same little jump and clap every time, which was just an anchor to ground me in the moment of, “Okay! We’re here! Do it!” And then, I’d have to show up. In a neurolinguistic programming kind of way, that put me in performance mode, where I let everything else go—the nails I didn’t get done, the dry-cleaning I didn’t pick up, and that we were having pasta again for dinner. Ritual helps me put the focus where it needs to be and let God in.

Every few weeks, I’d visit Guru Singh in his office for a session and give him the lowdown.

“I’m all for calendars and to-do lists and networking, Gu,” I said. “But without being given pages of text in my dreams or following hunches like coming to you or revealing my innermost secret writing desires to a virtual stranger in my kitchen, I’d be nowhere.” Guru’s crow’s feet crinkled. “Is that God, my muse, intuition, or just plain old luck?” I asked.

“Of course, it’s God!” he exclaimed. “But labels don’t matter.”

“I’m just grateful my GodMuse isn’t fickle,” I said. It wasn’t easy being dependent upon celebrity involvement, but their words afforded me endless material. With a muse that felt more like a doting mum, ever ready with a helping hand or cookie sheet of freshly baked story lines, I was willing—make that happy—to do the grunt work to earn my muse’s respect.

Please, tell me what to do, I’d beg, my arms wrapped around the trunk of a tree or extended outward toward the horizon, my toes in the earth. I started each day on reverential hands and knees, ready for duty, thanking God for the privilege of doing this work. Each night found my forehead pressed to the ground before hitting the sheets.

Who do You want me to pitch this week? Who will be open to this mission? How do You want me to open the next chapter? Thank You for giving me clarity when I wake up.

Following my on-and-off-again Guru-inspired morning meditations, I gratefully took the answers, guidance, and visions I’d been given and grounded them in my daily to-do lists. My actual writing prayer was simple: “Thank you for writing through me today. Use me to help the trees.” To that end, I figured my muse and Mother Earth and I were in a relationship—one in which she could count on me as I logged the hours in front of my screen; pitched VIPs far more often than was comfortable or logical; sequestered myself with only my family and my writing to keep me company for weeks at a time; and ended each day bleary-eyed from the strain of endless studying.

Elizabeth Gilbert

I don’t pray before I write. And I wish I did. I wish I prayed more. I don’t have a prayer practice, to be very honest with you. I have a very sketchy meditation practice, but it’s nothing I would teach or advise somebody to imitate because I think there are a lot of other people who engage at that level a lot better than I do. Not that it’s a competition, but there are people who have really deep, really rich meditation and prayer practices, and sometimes I look at them with envy, and then I think, Why don’t I do it?

And the thing is, I forget. I forget, and it’s very hard for me to pray. This is terrible. I’ve never said this before, but we’re speaking the truth here. It doesn’t serve anybody not to. It’s hard for me to pray when I’m not desperate. Prayer to me is still tied up in some sort of idea of desperate pleading that I go to when I’ve reached the end of myself, and I can’t handle things, and I don’t know what to do next, and I feel lost, that’s when I’ll turn to prayer. And I don’t think it should really be that way. That might be something I need to look at and explore.

It’s weird. I don’t even do a joyful prayer. It’s usually too caught up in joy and excitement for me to pause and do that. While I do not pray before I begin writing, when I am writing, I am my most authentic, most actualized, most in-tune, and most devout self. So, it could be that my prayer is that.

I have a very mystical relationship with my books. I believe that each one of them has its own soul, something it wants to be. My job is to work with it, to steward it into being what it wants to be. Not what the market wants it to be, or even necessarily always what I want it to be. A lot of the times, when I’m stuck with a book, I’ll just talk to it and ask it, “What is it that you would like to be?” Once it’s done, we can see whether anybody wants it or whether it’s marketable in that form.

Mary Karr, award-winning poet and author of the critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling memoirs The Liars’ Club, Cherry, and Lit, as well as The Art of Memoir and five poetry collections.

I do a sort of centering prayer exercise before I write, which is fifteen to thirty minutes of just following my breath. And I get on my knees a lot in the middle of the day. I might say the old Hemingway line: “Just say the next true thing.” Or I hit my knees, and I say a lot of swear words and shoot the finger at the light bulb and say, “Why do you want me to do this if it’s this damn hard?”

I figure even if I’m ranting and raving at God, at least we’re having a conversation. I also do something called the Examine of Conscience every night, where you kind of replay your day and look for evidence of God in the day. But also, when I’m really in a bind, I’ll pray the Litany of the Saints, which is, I don’t know, maybe a forty-five-minute event. It’s a good way of clearing my head.

Elizabeth Lesser, cofounder of Omega Institute and New York Times bestselling author of Broken Open (and several other bestsellers, Cassandra Speaks and Marrow).

We call it “Spiritual Practice” for a reason. In the same way, if you played the piano and practiced the scales over and over, it’s boring because you’re not practicing to become a great scale player. When my boys used to play basketball, they’d go outside and bounce the ball over and over. You’re practicing those monotonous things it takes to become an artist or an athlete. When you have a spiritual practice, you’re practicing the art of living—living with potency and kindness, and purpose. You’re practicing to actually get somewhere.

Does prayer coax the muse? Does a relationship with your higher power grease the door to creativity? Those who believe wisdom doesn’t just come from you but through you say yes. You’re never alone. The whole endeavor’s not all on your shoulders.

The two founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bob and Bill, were very different, but together they published one of the bestselling books of all time, referred to as The Big Book. Bill was super mystical, referring to his recovery like a “hot flash,” a sudden white light and sense of well-being while in treatment that freed him from addiction. Bob was ultra-pragmatic and practical. Bill said a higher power saved him. Bob said it was the fellowship and principles of the program that saved him.

I don’t believe it matters if you think your story is dictated by Mother Nature or your dead grandmother, fairy beings from the sixth dimension, or your years of training, research, and blood, sweat, and tears. What matters is having enough faith to keep showing up.

I can’t say for sure why I was given the dream of my first book or the total blind belief to pull it off, but the Bible says to ask, so I asked. And I still ask. Then I make it easy to receive, my writing tools at the ready. I’m all about grunt work. But I also love sacred rituals. Ideally, I start with a clean writing space and then light a candle or sage and thank God for working through me to help save forests. (If you haven’t noticed, this book is printed on Forest Stewardship Council® paper, meaning that it’s certified to have come from responsible sources that support forest conservation. #DreamInProcess)

Whether you’re bowing your head in solitude, pirouetting through your office to loud music, humming a mantra or a spiritual hymn, or tap-tapping away at your keyboard with cats snoring on your desk, do whatever makes your space feel sanctified, popping with possibility. You’re going for that sense of being plugged into your source—the bat signal to the Universe and your unconscious mind that it’s time to take this sacred shit seriously.

__________________

*Fun fact: In 2008, twenty-seven years after he started, Wyland finalized his epic one-hundredth Whaling Wall. Spanning over twenty-two acres—Google them!—in fourteen countries on four continents, these murals are viewed by an estimated one billion people a year.

8

Dancing with the Muse

Coaxing and Cultivating Creativity