Summer Reads & Muses

Summers I like to read off-genre: mysteries, thrillers, fantasy, young adult, beach reads, etc. This year I delved into “rom-coms.” Like their movie counterparts, rom-com books employ all the familiar tropes: romantic misunderstandings, competitions, interruptions at key moments, impossible relationships, simmering sexual charge, and of course the knowledge on the part of the reader that in the end things will work out for the lovers. All this is punched up with lots of clever banter between young, gorgeous, modern professionals.

I found myself devouring rom-com writer Emily Henry’s entire output, including one actually titled Beach Read. Even as I was rolling my eyes at the expected tropes and antics, I couldn’t stop turning the pages. I also polished off Rebecca Serle’s list, which adds a twist of magical realism to its romance. Some of her “light” situations are surprisingly thought-provoking.

When my 11-year old niece visited, we spent some time poking around a used bookstore and I came across a copy of E. L. Konigsburg’s Newbery award winner From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a favorite from when I was her age. As Zooey was searching exclusively for books about dragons, I bought it home for myself. And loved, loved, loved it. From an adult perspective, I really enjoyed having Mrs. Frankweiler as the behind-the-scenes narrator relating Claudia and Jamie’s adventures to her lawyer, Saxonberg, in her own style of clever banter. (Are you sensing a theme here?)

I rounded off my summer foray with the 20th anniversary edition of Stephen King’s classic book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Just as I was feeling in a bit of a slump with my own writing (hence the foray into lighter reading…) Stephen King reminded me that writing is supposed to be FUN!

And he talked about muses:

“There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think it’s fair? I think it’s fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but he’s got inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know.”

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by stephen king

I asked myself what my muse looks like, and was surprised by the answer.

Mine, it turns out, is a lot like The Cat In the Hat. I’ve always been drawn to children’s books. As an early reader I gained entry to more complex worlds at a young age, but never lost my love for those simple Seuss beginner readers.

Here I’m thinking specifically of the Cat as manifest in the Dr. Seuss classic The Cat In the Hat Comes Back. This is the book where the two children have been instructed by their mother to shovel snow out of the driveway while she is out. Little rule followers that they are, they are already outside shoveling when the Cat bursts onto the scene to once again break all the rules and make life a lot messier and more interesting. He takes a bath while eating a piece of cake and leaves a pink ring in the tub. In a cheerful attempt to clean it up, he transfers pink onto more and more things in the house, cleverly bantering all the while:

“Have no fear of that ring,”
Laughed the Cat in the Hat.
“Why, I can take cat rings
Off tubs. Just like that!

The cat in the hat comes back by Dr. seuss

Eventually the Cat blows the pink outside. His “helpers” —Little Cats A-Z emerge one by one from beneath his hat to help clean it up, and in the process make it worse and worse, turning the snow pink as far as they can see before finally blasting the enormous pink mess with Voom! Whisking the little cats back into the hat, and leaving the neatly shoveled snow clean and white before Mother returns.

What is the creative process if not this? Make a big mess, despair of getting it cleaned up in time, then Voom, it comes together. What a muse! What a mess! My guy doesn’t sit around, he stirs things up, and leaves things better and more interesting than he found them.

What does this look like in practice?

Well, I write and revise a lot of drafts of pretty much everything, even when I think I’m close. I write fast, I revise slow. I’m often appalled at what a MESS I have to make — splatting it all on the page, turning everything pink. Making it bigger and bigger before I can summon my own personal Voom. The creative process entails the Mess and the Voom.

Summer is over and fall, my personal favorite of the seasons, has begun. I’m back to my book clubs and more “literary” fare: Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, Percival Everett’s James, Chimamanda’ Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant and the unexpectedly delightful The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida. I’m joyfully creating once more, revising a couple of short stories and picking up my novel again (sequel to The Siren Dialogues and a really fun dive into modern mythology.)

Thank you to all the wonderful authors and muses who inspire me, and to that Cat of all Cats, with that Hat of all Hats. I think of myself as a dog person, but I guess I’m a cat lady, too, or a hat lady.

What does YOUR muse look like?