For Writers: A Crash Course on Divining Your Daemon
For Writers: A Crash Course on Divining Your Daemon
Questions and answers on connecting with your inner creative genius
Dear Living Dark community,
This post is for any writer, from aspiring to accomplished, who wants to better understand the concept, presence, and influence of the muse, the daimon/daemon, or the inner genius in his or her life and work.
For the past week over at Twitter (or more properly, as of this morning, over at “X”), I have been engaged in some depth-filled conversations about the writer’s daemon. It has evolved into a kind of question and answer format, with me posting statements on the role and nature of the daemon, and with people then posting comments and questions to which I propose answers.
This has resulted in some rich interactions. What exactly is this force and figure in a writer’s life? How can you become aware of it? How can you get to know it and learn to work effectively with it? How can the very concept of the daemon muse, and the approach to writing and creativity that is associated with it, enhance your writing? Conversely, is there perhaps something fearsome about the daemon? Could you potentially even misuse it? These are all questions have come up.
(You can find me at Twitter at @TheMattCardin.)
As you know, Twitter (or X), like all social media, is fleeting. A tweet generally has a lifespan of 24 hours or less.
That’s why I decided to save these recent interactions from the swirling drain of ephemerality by sharing them here with you, especially since their content is of direct interest to members of the Living Dark community.
Below is a reconstructed and rewritten version of the conversation so far. I have drawn together several separate strands to produce a coherent whole, and I have formatted the questions in bold. Importantly, this is not a mere copy/paste job. What I have produced here is a significant expansion containing additional detail and texture that wasn’t feasible to include within the compact confines of tweeted interactions.
If you aren’t already familiar with the concept of the writer’s daemon, this might serve as a useful introduction. Or if it’s something you already know about, this can serve as a helpful reiteration and clarification of critical points. For me, crafting this post has been a helpful exercise in distilling a deep message for writers and other creatives into a streamlined, readily communicable form.
The art of divining your daemon
Practically speaking, the most basic statement of truth about writing and creativity in relation to the inner genius is this: You aren’t ultimately responsible for it.
You are responsible for befriending your creativity.
You are responsible for practicing the craft side of it so that you can forge yourself into a channel, an instrument, a conduit for its clear and truthful expression.
You are responsible for actively waiting on it to court its presence and ensure you’re ready when it chooses to alight. As Picasso famously said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
But as for generating it, or controlling it, or determining its nature, content, or deep direction—these are beyond you. Their responsibility belongs to the creative spirit itself. Your job as a writer is not to “be creative” but to shepherd your unique creative spirit into the world through a rich discipline of inner collaboration.
In such work, the operative principle is: Give your daemon it due.
Your job as a writer is not to “be creative” but to shepherd your unique creative spirit into the world through a rich discipline of inner collaboration.
This all sounds interesting. But are we talking about something real or imaginary? Is this a metaphor, or are you advancing the idea of the daemon as a literal reality?
The question of creativity’s ultimate source is an old one. And a fascinating one.