It’s appropriate that Muse should be the weekly photo challenge this week because lately I’ve been thinking a lot about muses and what inspires me to write and how I can focus more on my writing.  I’m so haphazard with it and I want to hone it until it becomes my craft, not a hobby or a “just when I’m inspired” thing.

I  dream about spending time in a cottage on the Aran Islands, off the coast of Ireland, just writing, undisturbed by the day to day things that I am distracted by now.  This dream was brought about by spending just one day and one night on Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands.  I can’t tell you what it was about the place that has inspired such a yearning to immerse myself in it but inspire it has.  When I looked out across the water, I immediately saw myself in the coziness of a cottage overlooking the ocean, snug and warm from the cold Atlantic breeze, in front of my computer writing a book.

Was it a muse that put that image in my head? I think maybe it was.  I know that I’d never imagined that scene before I walked along the old, narrow, stone fence lined lanes.  Before I visited this beautiful place I had never imagined myself isolated from friends and family, immersed in nature and my writing.  I bless the muse who gave me the idea.  I don’t know when or how it will happen but happen it will.

I was watching an interesting Ted Talk the other day by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love.  She spoke about muses and that inner genius of creativity.  As a creative, I found it really interesting and put her theory to the test and spoke to my muse, asking for the help I needed to get over a case of writer’s block that I was experiencing while trying to write a set piece.  It’s definitely worth a watch.

So, here’s a gallery of Inis Mor where my muse feels I should write.

Happy musing.. Livvy xx