Let’s talk about the muse, shall we? We always say to show up and keep showing up, and the muse will eventually get the message and arrive just in the nick of time.
Well.
Yes.
We stand by that.
But what if there was another word for the muse?
What if the muse was also called awe?
When we inhabit our awe of the world, let it wash over us and sink into our hearts, feel that expansive joy, wonder, and urgency, it feels curiously similar to the muse, and the words come more easily.
Awe is hard to find these days. Genuine awe, real wonder, reverence is hard when digital media is sucking our souls, and the news cycle is eesh and nature is aggressively on the attack against us. The world feels scary, not beautiful.
But awe is still here.
It’s in the small kindnesses of strangers.
In the love of friends.
In the steady and growing roar of a generation who won’t be discarded like so many careless seed husks before them.
Maybe we need to stop only expecting awe in the grandiose. Because you know that weeds sprout in the smallest of cracks, in the most desolate wasteland, and bloom into a shocking magnificence. Then, without warning, a tiny breeze carries their packets of awe further into the world, and round and round we go.
Do not discredit the minutiae because within it lies the seeds of greatness.
I used to think that when I was An Official Writer™, I would feel different. Broad and full of wisdom, formidable and enigmatic, like the writers I love. I thought I would feel the way my heroes looked to me. But I am a writer (official, ™, etc), and I just feel the same way I always have: like me. Isn’t that amazing? That you can be and do the things you want while still being you.
Stop looking so hard.
Drop the maps.
Surrender to the world and the simple awe of existence.
Forgive yourself everything.
Acknowledge your fears and step softly past them.
Move gently (but not necessarily quietly) and with purpose towards your goals.
Go write.
Sarah and Team WHQ
