At the Anvil of the Wordsmith

What a lot of people don’t realize is that writing is hard work.   Often times, it’s not a walk in the park.  Sitting at a computer or on the couch with just a paper and pen will never be harder than when you’re writing.  Sometimes the words come in a brilliant flash of inspiration, but often times they don’t. 

 People speak of their Muse and I used to wonder if such a Muse actually existed.  Not the muses who were goddesses — but your own, personal Muse — the inspiration that gives life to your words.

 You can’t wait for your Muse to come to you.  Sometimes she does, but if you don’t help her, coax her, then she’ll come less and less frequently until she never comes at all. 

 You have to court her like a lover, because she is your lover, closer than a wife or husband, boyfriend or girlfriend will ever be or can ever be. 

 Because you are your Muse and your Muse is you. 

Strange, isn’t it?  To truly write, you must love yourself.  You must explore yourself.  What do you hate?  What do you love?  What is important to you, what is not important to you?  What do you believe in, what do you not believe in?  That is your cornerstone.  Once you have your cornerstone, you can begin to build into other viewpoints, other beliefs, other planes of existence and thought.  Once you know Yourself, you can know other characters.  Once you are intimately acquainted with yourself, you may intimately know others who may become Characters in your stories. 

But you must feed yourself with words and stories just like you feed yourself with food.  Ingest a variety of words — fiction, fantasy, essays, etc.  Read bad authors so that you will know not how to write.  Read good writers so that you know how to write well.  Observe how they craft their work.  Do not copy them, because then you are not yourself – when you imitate you deny entrance to your Muse. 

 Do not strive to be the next J.K Rowling or the next Neil Gaiman.  Strive to be better than them, to be different than them.  Strive to see things they never saw before, to write words they never wrote, to put beauty where there had been only mediocrity before. 

A wordsmith is a creator.  He takes a word, just a little word, and he softens it in the fire, melts it just a little bit, forms it to fit his purpose.  Then he takes another word and crafts it to the other.  He does this again and again until he has an image, a creation.  If it is not good enough, he will melt it down and begin again until it is perfect, or as perfect as can be. 

There is sweat on his forehead.

His arms are tired.

But at the end, there is satisfaction, the kind that one can only find in creating something and creating it well.