Where did our passion go?

Insecure Writer’s Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. It's the first Wednesday of the month, so it's time to express our fears or offer encouragement to others. If you’d like to join, click on the link to sign up.

Our relationship has ended. It is useless to keep denying it. My writing muse and I, we don't talk anymore. I think she's having an affair with someone else and frankly, I'm also dating other creative muses. We are not into each other anymore. I used to believe people didn't change. Not in their essence, anyway. Writing stories was part of my essence. I could bet my life on it. I could change many things, except stop writing stories. It was what kept me sane because my life was madness.

In the search for challenges, I came up with the idea to learn about writing and, furthermore, to write in English. That way I would both learn to make better stories and improve my foreign language. It didn't work out as I expected. I don't think my muse liked the idea. It's not the English that bothered her. No. I think it was all the technical stuff I overwhelmed her with. In honor to the truth, I could feel how she grew more and more upset because the more I read, the less I wrote. Forcing the writing was useless. My muse made her point very clear.

I am a sensitive dragon, like any artist. I don't react well to hostility, and worse if I feel ignored. "I was just trying to do you a favor, to improve you; but you know what? Screw you!" I told her. "Here it is my drawing muse, and my... my sculpting muse. And over there is my spiritual muse and they are kinder and prettier than you!  Do you think I'll beg you? Ha! Dragons don't beg."

I threw my unfinished manuscript on her head and walked away. Bite that, I thought. My other muses welcomed me and comforted me. They kept my mind busy and my creativity need satisfied. But as in any divorce, there is the problem of friends. I came to the blogsphere as writer. The circle of friends I move in is mainly formed by writers. Not that they ask me how is my writing muse doing but reading about their achievements, and corresponding relationships with their own writing muses make me think on mine.

We were so close, I thought I would die writing stories. Actually, we never had a fight but until I tried "to make her better". She took serious offense in that. Whenever I run into the title of my unfinished manuscript (that is like ten times a day) something inside me cringes. She feels unfit, so do I. Nothing will make it better because we stopped liking each other. She felt useless. Probably because I told her she was useless, I don't quite remember now.

The point is I feel bad about losing her. Losing muses is not my idea of improving as an artist. Not at all. I blame myself. I wasn't strong enough to protect her, to defend her uniqueness. Maybe she wasn't perfect according to the Holy Rules of Modern Literature, but she made me happy. Sometimes, in the solitude of my creative sanctuary, I deeply regret ever wanting to be a best-selling author because that's what started all this mess in the first place.

She's gone and I just realized I've been talking to a cardboard shape of her she left by the corner.

My other muses warm my heart, but there is a spot that is permanently cold. I wonder, how do you apologize to a muse?

Dragon Hugs!