The Role of a Writer

"The Muse Rewards Action"

Lately I’ve been thinking of the role of the artist. What is their specific purpose? I am concentrating on a particular concept. A line I recently found is ‘the muse rewards action’. That resonates with me, because it is almost like an artist’s role is to be active in that rewarding action. An artist’s goal is to take the action, get the inspiration, and form that inspiration into a product. The world then consumes that product for a number of reasons. Perhaps for escapism or perhaps to show a vital truth that wasn’t uncovered until recently.

The next question then becomes, what kind of product does the artist want to build, which is much easier. I want to build something elegant and approachable. Something that is almost a common extravagance. I want to build something like a cup of Starbucks coffee. It’s more costly than coffee at home, but is done in a way that is more delicious than what I could brew. In addition, it still has a low enough cost that it can be afforded on a regular-ish basis. When I have a cup, I feel a bit fancier than if I were to drink from a mug I brought from home.

So the question becomes, what does it take to build that elegance? The answer to that is: pre-work. Research and study ahead of time. Using methods to help elevate what would normally be done. The thoughts I am trying to sort is what pre-work methods can be done that would be most effective? What modes of inspiration help start the cycle the best?

I’ve started with using music and images to help with inspiration. I’ve tried out using books to help me learn more about the craft. Hopefully, I can build that common luxury item that people enjoy. A splurge to make their lives a bit better and help them escape things. I still need a better system, and I hope to get to that end. For now, it’s a matter of trial and working things out, bit by bit.

My current thoughts are to use some kind of system between Google Docs and Google Keep. These can be connected together, are accessible from anywhere, and are backed up in the cloud. However, I haven’t yet thought of how to weave these together. Perhaps I need to look at the strengths of each and play to that end. I could build “bonus keep notes” in the main documents and these would be temporary storage to hold onto concepts I am looking into. However, they would only be used in a temporary capacity, with any more concrete capacity being Google Docs? I am not sure how this will look now, but I feel like I need to build some kind of system to capture all the various components I am gathering. Perhaps the best way to do this is to look at how I would consume the random bits and then play towards that? Again, I am not sure of the proper system here.