The Muse is not a Marketeer

Writers can wonder where ideas come from, but maybe a more important consideration is what the ideas stand for.

None but a blockhead ever wrote but for money, according to Samuel Johnson and Larry King. I think that is valid advice for the act of writing, but does it apply to the inspiration that prompts the writing? 

Should a writer think first about money, asking the muse for profitable ideas? Or should the writer request purposeful ideas and then dress them up to sell?

That's confidential information shared between writer and muse, isn't it? I would not decree my choice as guidance for anyone else, and I have no way of knowing if any given literary masterpiece started out as the gleam of dollar signs.

All I know is that when I try to talk myself into believing something, the contrived conviction eventually wears off. And when I try to talk myself out of something I believe inherently, the self inhibition eventually wears off. I've lived a long life experiencing a lot of wearing off.

What is true to me is what entertains me as it appears on the page, what is fun, even thrilling, to see in my mind's eye and describe with words. The muse doesn't hand me stuff ready made, it stands over my shoulder, kibitzing my own choices. 

Fun, even thrilling, for me likely would be absurd and depressing for most others. I analyze others, deriving a calculated version of how they function, which deprives me of true feelings for them but creates true feelings for the characterizations I have made of them. The best approximation I can make of Hope is to admit that I might be wrong. The best imitation of compassion I can manage is to identify with my characters' falibility.

Thus, my Muse is not a Marketeer. It does not spoon me ideas with a promising return on investment. Born naked, it is up to me to dress up for the party. I will sell myself through appearance, but that is packaging, not product.

If you want modernized Samuel Johnson, read any advice about script writing. The message is always about money: where to find it, how to deliver it by pandering to audiences. When I contrive to please others, I displease myself, which means that the essential talent in writing for hire is to repress one's well earned self loathing. 

And a screenwriter is a writer for hire, not necessarily starting out that way but any sale will make it that way. Either the script will be changed by others or others will insist that you make the changes yourself. Money becomes the salve for the wounds of indignation.

One of my absolute convictions in life is that audiences, whether reading or viewing, seek solice, forgiveness, salvation, self justification. They will accept truth only if it is kind. 

My work will never be popular because I think the truths worth writing about are cruel, and that the task of a truth teller is to show how one can cope with cruelty by refusing to practice it, refusing to let it corrupt one's soul, refusing to allow it dominance over the oases of beauty amidst bleak desert sands, refusing it by seeing beauty even in those desert expanses, and that the way to do this is to embrace one's pain and make it a thing of wonder, a reminder that you are alive.