Muse

I promise it didn’t start with plagiarism. What good writer plagiarizes anyway? No, it, like all crimes, began with admiration from the inspiration-starved. In our world true focus is limited. You can try to capture it in the calm of your own home, but then you remember you need to wash the dishes. Or do the laundry. Or pay your credit card bill. The indignities of modern life entrap the mind. Sure, you can get out of the house, go to the neighborhood cafe, but you're distracted by the whirr of the coffee machines, and crying sugar-addled toddlers. The local library is lovely but the silence enlivens your inner critic. So when inspiration is in your grasp, you must take it. And though it is in your hands, it was never in your control. 

Two Years Prior

“What can I help you find today?” I turned to find a Barnes & Noble bookseller standing next to me with a pleasant grin and chipper tone. I wondered if she truly was passionate about her job.

“I’m just looking,” I replied, “do you have any recommendations for something exciting?”

“What is your idea of excitement?” She asked. 

I paused. What indeed. 

“I suppose, something invigorating. Or inspiring. I seem to be in a creative rut lately.” I replied.

“Fiction?” 

“Yes…” I hesitated. I tend to avoid fiction when I am working on my own projects, but one can only with your own creativity for so long before it gets tedious. 

“Okay, I have something I think you’ll love!” She started walking towards the new releases section, and went to the bestsellers stand. 

“Okay, this may seem like a reach, but you have to try Robin Low’s new release.” I began to question Barnes & Noble’s choice in booksellers. 

“Really?”

“Yes! I know people judge her work, but it’s actually really good, especially when you read her older work. But this new release is really a return to form for Robin, I think.” 

I took the book from her hands. She was on a first name fan basis with this author, which gave me pause again. 

“Give it a try. I read this book, and then my own novel poured out of me.” She replied. 

I squinted in skepticism. 

“I’ll give you the member discount.”

“Alright, I’ll try it.”

I walked to my car twenty dollars poorer. In the driver's seat I looked at the title: Perhaps Tomorrow by Robin Low. The cover featured relatively non-descript digital floral designs. Daisies or daffodils I had guessed, I knew little of flowers, arranged in a vase resting atop a piece of parchment on a charmingly antiquated wooden desk. Most of Low’s books sported these generic historical covers. I believed them to be uninspired, though at that point I had felt like the pot to Low’s kettle. On the drive home, I pondered what had led me to this point as an author. If I could even call myself an author. I’d hardly written a grocery list in over a year. Each time I attempted, I stared at the white pages of Google Docs seeking the call of the white void. I waited for its blinding creativity to overwhelm me, like it once had. Each time, I was left emptier, until I finally felt I had nothing left. What is a writer who can’t write? An author whose pen has rendered itself impotent is no author at all. 

I pulled into the parking lot and walked up to my apartment complex clutching the Barnes & Noble bag tightly, lest my neighbors spy the popular historical fiction novel through the barely transparent plastic. There was no need for that level of paranoia, but the panopticon of an MFA in Creative Writing never truly leaves you, even two years on. Had I still been in school at that moment, I would have never been caught dead with a Robin Low book, or in a Barnes & Noble for that matter. We cosplayed as artistic bohemians in our makeshift artists collective in a dingy apartment on Manhattan's Lower East Side. We were theater kids who couldn’t sing or memorize lines, but loved the drama of exploring the human condition, and idealized our misinterpreted idea of Rent for far too long. Anything commercial enough to garner financial stability received eye-rolls and a long-suffering sigh. I’m quite certain half of them went on to become bankers. The other half went on to teach, or prolong their education in the doctorate program, or work in marketing. Then there was me. I stuck to my guns of becoming a writer of fiction. I cringe at the idealism of believing I could be an intellectual author, someone literary who wins awards and is a voice of generation. Mostly, I cringe at the naivety of believing that I could actually make money doing that. Sometimes I wish I had left my artistic pursuits behind and became practical, like my classmates. A marketing job would have at least paid me well enough to stay in New York City. I could have lived my bohemian fantasy, but this time with health care and a corporate salary. I sat on the couch in my spartan living room. I was grateful for what I had, but my gratitude was wearing thin. 

I pulled out the Robin Low book and opened to the first page. In some ways, it felt like a new depth, a rock bottom of sorts, reading popular media that I would have reviled for much of my life. Yet the bookseller’s words kept coming back to me: I read this book, and then my own novel poured out of me. An artist starved of inspiration is no artist at all. I dove into the novel. 

***

My stupor broke in the evening as I turned the final page. I awoke to the world around me, startled to find myself in the 21st century Rochester, New York instead of Regency England. My living room, with its dim lighting and lack of opulence, startled me. How long had I been neglecting this space? It was little wonder why I wasn’t inspired. Such a place would dim the lights of even the muses. I needed to improve my environment, but first I needed to write. When I shut the book, the story came to me. Suddenly my world was engulfed with ballrooms and empire waist gowns, furtive glances, and subtle stares and glaring mama’s. The sutures of my skull were near bursting with creativity. I sat down at my glaringly contemporary desk, wanting for charm and intrigue. I was desperate for a quill and ink, something that even in my most pretentious days, I never sought. I opened my laptop as a consolation prize. The white void of the Google Doc finally stared back and sucked me in. My fingers were a flurry of motion as my story spilled onto the pages, never ceasing for an edit or a search of the thesaurus. Had I known Robin Low’s Regency romances were so infectious, I would have become an acolyte years ago. False Bohemia be damned. An inspired artist is one who feeds the world the words of the human condition. And what is more pertinent to humanity than love in all its forms. My God! I was on fire. My characters fell in and out of love in an instant. Their feelings were as capricious as the desert and twice as deadly. The ballroom was a tightrope, and the characters were untrained gymnasts. I imbued myself into each of them, as I believed Robin Low had done. How else would they be so real?

My creativity’s spell had ceased by the time the rosy light of dawn stretched its tendrils through my window. I snapped my head up and ran out to watch the sun rise and feel its light on my face. This is it, I thought. This is the artist’s life. What I had been waiting and searching for. I could imagine the faces of my former starving-artist compatriots. What would they think, seeing be bask in the sunrise, giddy off the euphoria felt in following in the footsteps of Robin Low, of all authors. Her stilted prose and faux fancy anachronistic Regency England language now flowed through every crevice of my brain. Everything she wrote spilled out onto my laptop. I added my twist of course, and at the time, I believed it, but my inspiration was  owed my inspiration to Robin Low. I needed to express my gratitude. I returned to my living room and navigated toward Instagram. I needed to follow Robin Low. I felt the compulsion to thank her and apologize at once. Her literary prowess was beyond pedestrian, it was necessary to the craft of writing. I believed that. How naive to think that the muse wouldn’t come to collect her due.