Nectar

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Greek Mythology

Sang to Apollo's lyre in Jupiter's palace.

Get the Most out of Your Creative Partnership with Your Muse

  • Pay Attention: Listen to yourself. Don't ignore your subconscious. Get in the habit of listening to it, seriously considering its ideas, and thanking it when you get a good one. Pay closer attention to your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and dreams. Seriously consider "stupid" ideas, find the value in them, and gain respect for your subconscious, even if you ultimately reject its ideas.
  • Record your Ideas: Do it all the time. Have a record of many ideas that you would have forgotten otherwise. Free up your mind to think of other things. When you think of an important idea and don't write it down, it takes up space and mental energy. Have the discipline to periodically transcribe those recordings and notes to build a huge idea collection and clean mental workspace.
  • Manage its Appetites Judiciously: The subconscious mind has appetites, which can be primal and seem to be part of its job. If it feels one of these appetites too strongly, it will obsess about it. If you want ideas for an RTS but can only think about cookie cake, your narcissistic mom, or MMOs, you can't get much good work done. The intrusive thoughts come from the subconscious who has to do the heavy lifting. Work out the appetites, come up with compromises to keep it satisfied, and come up with genius ideas. Some appetites should be curbed not fed or they will grow in the long term. Don't be a creative that self-destructs.
  • Sleep: Allow your mind to perform the strange process of sorting, filing, and reorganizing. If you don't get enough sleep, your subconscious will be less active.
  • Don't Push Too Hard: You remember random details better when you move on than when you concentrate forcefully. The subconscious works on the problem in the background while you move on. When it finds it, it will give it to you. Straining will not make it faster and seems to slow it down.

(The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008. Page 65-67 - ends on 68, but it's missing...)

Creative Subconscious Profile

Jesse Schell suspects the long-term appeal of Harpo Marx from the Marx Brothers films is because he matches the profile of the creative subconscious almost perfectly (a resonant theme?) - doesn’t speak (or doesn’t care to), is impulsive (eats whatever he sees, chases girls, gets into fights), is very emotional (always laughing, crying, or having fits of anger), is always playful, and is certainly irrational. However, his crazy solutions to problems often save the day, and in quiet moments, he plays music of angelic beauty — not for the praise of others, but simply for the joy of doing it.

Common characteristics of the creative subconscious that most people seem to share:

  • Can’t talk, or at least chooses not to. Not in words, anyway. Tends to communicate through imagery and emotions.
  • Impulsive. Tends not to plan ahead, tends to live in the moment.
  • Emotional. Gets swept up in whatever you are feeling — happy, angry, excited, afraid — the subconscious seems to feel things more deeply and more powerfully than the conscious mind.
  • Playful. It has a constant curiosity, and loves wordplay and pranks.
  • Irrational. Not bound by logic and rationality, the subconscious comes up with ideas that often make no sense. Need to go to the moon? Perhaps a long ladder will work. Sometimes these ideas are a useless distraction, but sometimes they are the clever perspective you have sought all along — whoever heard of a ring molecule, for example?

Without the rational mind to plan things out, take precautions, and set things straight, this guy would never survive on his own. Many people get in the habit of ignoring what the subconscious mind suggests. If you are doing your taxes, that is probably a good idea. But if you are brainstorming about games, your silent partner is more powerful than you are. Keep in mind that he has been creating entertaining virtual worlds for you each night, since before you were born, and he is more in touch with the essence of experience than you can ever hope to be.

(The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008. Page 64-65)

Stephen King's Muse

"There is a muse (traditionally, the muses were women, but mine’s a guy; I’m afraid we’ll just have to live with that), but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement 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 this is 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 (what I get out of mine is mostly surly grunts, unless he’s on duty), but he’s got the inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the midnight 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."

(Stephen King - On Writing - He anthropomorphizes his subconscious as a person.)

(The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008. Page 63-64)