Someone at the reading last night asked me about the "muse." When she comes, how to prepare for her arrival. All I could say was, "she comes when she damn well feels like it, which is rarely when you're ready."
I think there is a temptation for writers to assume the muse, or our inspiration comes at pre-ordained times and in cargo loads. In other words, we expect the muse to come when we're at our desks, and that she'll stay all night long. Well. I have found it is more often the case that inspiration arrives in tiny, fleeting, easily-overlooked moments.
Rather than recieving a torrential river of poetic pages while sitting with your hands poised at the keyboard, (which would be the sensible, polite way for inspiration to arrive,) it's more likely to stumble across a small gem, a single word, a sudden snapshot while you're out - running around in the world. Glancing at the slender wrists of a young waitress setting a plate down in front of you, catching sight of a blooming hydrangea, tracing your fingers along the warm metal banister outside an old stone building, catching the sound of a distant siren. In these moments small thoughts, like hummingbird moths, flut into view and then away again without much attention. Either we catch them, or we don't.
If we do notice a splendid detail, or conjure the sudden thought, then the thing to do is put it in your pocket (write it in your notebook) and take it home, where you can sit at your desk and put it with all the other captured hummingbird moths and press them lovingly, albeit firmly, onto paper. In this way, bit by bit, we stitch inspiration together, like half-blind quilters instead of waiting in vain for fiery archangels, which are remarkable to look at, but who always come late or not at all, and manage to singe the furniture.
