Post #6: My Muse Is a Liar and Other Comforting Truths

I never meant to have a writers muse

I never meant to have a muse—at least, not in the way people talk about a muse in writing.
They sound exhausting, don’t they? All moody sighs and cryptic metaphors, appearing at inconvenient hours—usually when you’re trying to sleep or locate a pen that was definitely on your desk five minutes ago.

And besides, don’t we outgrow that sort of thing?

Serious writers, we’re told, don’t wait for muses. They rely on discipline. Structure. Craft. They show up, do the work, and let the more romantic language of creativity sit quietly in the background—where it belongs, apparently.

Once upon a time I believed that.

I met Minnie in a bookstore

Not dramatically. Not fatefully. Just… there.

I was standing in the fantasy section, holding a book I was half-convinced I should buy and half-convinced I would never finish. You know the kind—beautiful cover, promising premise, the faint suspicion it might collapse somewhere around Chapter Twelve.

I had already read the back twice. I was still undecided.

“That one loses its nerve halfway through,” a voice said beside me. Calm. Certain. Not unkind.

I turned. She was older than me, though not in any way that could be easily measured. She wore a hat that looked like it belonged in a different decade—perhaps several. Her gloves were lace. Her expression suggested she had already read not only the book in my hands, but the one I was thinking of writing.

Before I could respond, she reached past me and pulled another book from the shelf.

“This one,” she said, placing it gently in my hands, “knows what it’s doing.”

That was how it started.

We ended up at a small café down the street. Tea, of course. (She had opinions about the coffee.) What I thought would be a passing conversation turned into something… longer.

She asked what I was reading. Then what I liked. Then—without transition—she asked what I was trying to write, and why I hadn’t finished it yet. I hadn’t told her I was writing anything. I’m quite certain of that.

She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t soften the question or offer an explanation for how she’d arrived at it. She simply watched me over the rim of her teacup, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world.

It was not.

She introduced herself as Minerva Widdershade. “Minnie,” she said, with the faintest suggestion that I should choose carefully how familiar I intended to be.

She spoke about stories the way some people speak about architecture. Structure mattered. Weight mattered. Integrity mattered. And she had very little patience for anything that looked impressive but couldn’t hold.

At some point—though I couldn’t tell you exactly when—she said, “If you’re going to write it, you might as well write it properly.”

It did not feel like encouragement. It felt like a contract.

The Kind of Presence You Don’t Ignore

Since then, Minnie has made herself… available. She has a way of appearing at precisely the moment something isn’t working. Sometimes she stops by—unannounced, of course—and settles into a chair as though she’s always lived there. Other times it’s a message, a note, a call placed with suspiciously good timing.

Once, she emailed me a single line: “You’ve mistaken momentum for progress.”
No greeting. No signature.
Just that.

Minnie doesn’t behave like anyone I would comfortably label a muse. Not that I’ve known many (or any) before. She doesn’t bring inspiration. She doesn’t arrive with beautiful ideas wrapped in metaphor and expectation either.

She brings interruption with her – deliberately. And an unsettling ability to notice exactly what I am avoiding—often before I’ve admitted it to myself. She collects plot holes like souvenirs. Files my self-doubt under “compost.” Has very strong opinions about pacing, emotional honesty, and the structural integrity of Chapter Fourteen.

She has, on more than one occasion, reached across my desk, flipped open a notebook I wasn’t ready to revisit, and pointed—wordlessly—at the exact line I was trying not to fix. And then says to me, “There. That’s where it stopped being honest.”

She doesn’t soothe.
She sharpens.

I Tried to Make Sense of Her

I go to her house sometimes.

It sits just far enough from everything to feel intentional. A small place with a cozy porch, a swing nearby that complains softly in the wind, and a view that always seems to be thinking about something.

For a while, I tried to make sense of her. Not philosophically—just small, practical questions.

How she knew what I was working on before I said anything.
How she always arrived at the exact moment something wasn’t working.
How she could read a scene once and point—immediately—to the line I was hoping she wouldn’t notice.

I asked her about it, once. She stirred her tea, considered the question for a moment, and said, “You’re not difficult to read. You’re just hoping no one does.”

I didn’t ask again.

Here’s the part no one really tells you: A muse—if we’re going to use that word—is not there to inspire you. She’s there to argue with you. And yet…

She is not always right. And this is where things become interesting. Because for all her precision—for all her ability to see straight through my carefully constructed narrative illusions—Minnie also has a tendency to push. To interpret too quickly. To assume the deeper truth before it’s fully formed. To insist on meaning where there may still be uncertainty.

In other words, she tells the truth. And sometimes she tells it too soon. This is why my muse is a liar. Not because she’s purposely trying to deceive, but because she is thinking ahead and I clearly don’t see it.

She speaks from instinct. From pattern. From something that understands story at a level I haven’t consciously reached yet—but that doesn’t always mean she’s finished thinking. She’s mastered the ability to think 10 scenes ahead. But, she’s also been wrong on occasion.

The work, it turns out, is not to obey her. It’s to engage with her. To listen. To question. To test what she’s pointing at against what the story actually needs. Because if I follow her blindly, I risk forcing meaning where it hasn’t earned its place. I’ve made that mistake before—trying to force one part of my story into shape instead of letting it become what it needed to be, something I wrote about in The Story Had Other Plans.

But if I ignore her entirely? The story flattens. The dialogue stiffens. The truth goes quiet.

To tell you the truth, I love and appreciate every challenging moment of the whole process.

An Understanding

So we’ve kind of reached an understanding – Minnie and me. She pours the tea. I do the writing. And somewhere between her interruptions and my stubbornness, the story begins to tell the truth.

Minnie still turns up when I least expect her. At the door. Across the table. Already seated on the porch when I arrive, as though she’s been expecting me to catch up.

Sometimes she brings commentary. Sometimes questions. Occasionally silence that feels more pointed than either. But she always brings clarity. She is there—sometimes across from me, sometimes just down the line of a conversation—but always, unmistakably, present. Not to help. But to make sure I do what I need to do.

And to that, Minnie says: “I don’t help, darling. I make sure you don’t look away.”

She has a porch, you know. A real one. And, as it turns out, a habit of writing things down.
If you’re inclined to listen, she’s been leaving notes there.
I’d suggest bringing tea.

Back soon. Assuming she approves the ending.