The author, a fiction writer, explores the relationship between the writer/artist and the so-called Muse, especially with respect to working rituals that precede the artist’s creative expression and make it more accessible. She takes an informal approach to a collaborative inquiry and experiments with her own musings as she navigates through her colleagues’ responses to a questionnaire in which she asks them to qualify and self-analyze their pre-writing/painting rituals and ensuing working habits. Her attempt to deepen her own experience by understanding the experience of others unfolds in this lyric essay in which linguistic strategies serve to differentiate inner process and discovery in the world. She takes liberties, invoking Franz Kafka, and even addressing him as one of her colleagues. The result is a hybrid form of creative-scholarly writing, informative and lyrical rather than analytical, that is inclusive of the researcher’s voice as a fictionist, who, in collaboration with her colleagues, is reckoning with the Muse
