My daughter met the muse this morning

I believe in a muse. I don't know what it is. But I believe in it. And I'm not the only one.
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In On Writing, Stephen King says that "stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world." And his muse, the grumpy guy in the basement with a bag of magic, is what helps him dig them up.

Rick Rubin describes the muse in The Creative Act: A Way of Being as "the Source." And Rubin doesn't think it belongs to artists. He thinks it's all around us, all the time. An endless supply of ideas, waiting to be caught. We're just antennas. Some people have learned to tune in. But the signal is there for everyone. Rubin calls creativity a birthright. Not a gift for a chosen few. Something every one of us is born able to do.

I've experienced the muse many times. In legal writing, the nuance in an argument that can win the case suddenly appears in my mind. In fiction, the turn of a scene that fills a plot hole perfectly. Or, last night, at 4:30 a.m., I woke up suddenly knowing how to start a history talk I'd been struggling with all week. I don't know what the muse is. God, some other spirit, or just a biological mechanism firing in our brains. But I know it's real.

Which is why I was so happy today, driving my daughter to practice, when she said, "Dad, I had some song lyrics just pop into my head this morning in the shower." She sang them for me. And I was honestly, genuinely impressed.

But here's what I told her. The muse will give you ideas. But it won't finish them for you. If you don't work with them, it will snatch them right back and give them to somebody else. And there are lots of examples of that. She took out her phone immediately and started writing down the lyrics.

Being a writer is a special job. One that comes with the responsibility of taking these ideas from the muse and turning them into something the world is telling you it needs. And I'm so excited she got to experience that.