Introduction - A Hopeful Venture

I love to write!

I hope to be a published author of middle grade and young-adult fantasy books some day. Since creating worlds requires lots of research, there should be plenty of extra non-fiction topics to support a blog that other people might find helpful.

 While I was trying to find the words to start a blog I wrote a first post that I decided had a more fanciful tone than I wanted to start out on, but was fun and is a good spring board for my first question for you, my readers. Here's how I was originally going to start my blog.

At the Mercy of my Muses' Interests

I have some muses that want a blog. They are very powerful muses, but quiet. I can feel them working inside me, but I am not sure what they are trying to say. I hope this blog will help me listen to them better.

Let me introduce you to the most vocal muse. Her name is Running Deer Woman. I know she is Native American. I believe she is a medicine woman. She likes to instruct me with silence. It's a hard method to learn by so we are progressing slowly. She doesn't ever give up on me though, so I struggle on. She currently wears nondescript traditional clothes. I would love to find out which tribe or tribes of aboriginal ancestors she represents. 
 

Running Deer Woman introduced me my second muse. Asha, the World Tree, grows somewhere in Northern Europe, I believe. Asha speaks in a tree language that I am trying to translate. But I must quiet my internal noises to hear it because it is often as soft as a whisper of leaves in the wind. I have learned that Asha is very concerned, possibly alarmed, about the relationship between humans and trees, past and present. I think trees are really cool and I find world trees intriguing so I am eager to translate Asha's words quickly. Maybe this blog will help me be quiet myself enough to hear her.

Asha has a little friend who has been visiting me for decades, but she is a most trying muse. Since I'm not completely sure what she even looks like and since mostly all she does is giggle and hide, I'm going to call her, Elusive Giggling Fairy, EGF for short. I think EGF is about five inches tall and hides in the flowers and bushes that grow beside any and every forest. I've mostly caught sight of her beautiful glistening wings and slender little limbs. I think she wears dresses of leaves and flower petals of different colors on different visits. She plays tricks on me: jumping out at me in unusual places, making connections in my story that I never suspected, hiding my notes, leaving little muddy footprints on my drawings, etc. EGF giggles at me when I get frustrated. Maybe this blog will help me figure out her name, what she looks like and what she wants to teach me. I can hear her giggling now. 

 

One thing I have been able to figure out about these muses is that they want me to write a blog about nature mythology and the healthy imagination. They want to use this blog to offer healing. As every writer knows, we must honor and humor our muses or they desert us. And since these muses are helping me write a book series, I am at their mercy. Hopefully they know what they are doing, because I sure don't. Keeping up a blog with my current schedule seems like a huge beast to tackle and I'm not sure I'm qualified, but I must trust my muses and follow their inspiration. So bear with me.

First Question for my Readers

Though whimsical, there is truth in my original attempt. I'm not sure exactly what a muse is, but artists and writers are always talking about them. What do you think a muse is?