Empty Cups and Silent Muses 
February 27, 2019

I believe it was Jung who described the creative urge as a kind of neurosis, and
said that it expressed itself two ways. In one, the artist filled up with energy
like a cup filling with water, then emptied himself all in one burst, and so had
to wait until the cup refilled before he could go back to work. In the other,
the artist had a cup of creative energy that was full but the incoming energy
overflowed the rim, and so had to be dealt with constantly.

I'm firmly the second kind of artist. I write every day, and have a minimum
daily word count. Paradoxically, though, there are times when I--like the first
kind of writer--feel my cup has run dry. So how does someone who's a daily
writer deal with those times when they feel they have no creative energy, when
the muse has gone silent? 

One method is, of course, to take page from the first kind of artist and take a
break from writing, be it for a couple of hours or a couple of days. This has
worked for me from time to time. I get up and do the dishes and a couple of
loads of laundry and suddenly, the problem that had left me at a dead end
resolves itself and I can sit back down and pick up writing where I left off. Or
sometimes, I'll purposefully and consciously schedule a day in which I don't
write at all, but run errands or spring clean the house or sit on the couch and
read. But so far, the longest break that hasn't been forced upon me by
circumstances has been about two days. Then the urge to write overpowers me.

The most common method I use is to simply just continue writing. Sometimes I
stick with my current project, knowing that the muse will take what I've written
and return it back to me in a better form later. Sometimes I pick an entirely
different project--or no project at all--and write, knowing that even if the
muse isn't around, the writing I do do is practice that will make me a better
translator of her inspiration into words, and that the pages I've written will
become the raw material of some later story or essay. This is the writerly
equivalent of scales on the piano or a bit of noodling out a new melody.

As for you fill/empty-type writers, I'm afraid I don't have any practical
suggestions for what to do when the muse doesn't seem to come back as rapidly as
you'd hoped. Perhaps try writing "dry," since I believe it's possible to go back
and forth between the two types of writer (or even to be both types, depending
on the project and genre). In any case, have confidence that the muse will
return and that the cup will fill up again. Because it will.

(c) 2019 by Andrew Gudgel 
email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com