[Julie Steiner]

Well, that's understandable, Michael, since my synopsis wasn't exactly a balanced consideration of the book's strengths and weaknesses. We all get a little carried away sometimes.

Digressing a bit....

I know lots of atheists and agnostics who refer to "my muse" in terms of a metaphysical entity with a mind of his or her own. However, I'm confident that they don't actually believe that such an entity exists, except in the way that "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus"...i.e., both the muse and Santa Claus are personifications of abstractions (perhaps the impulse to create/innovate and the impulse to give others joy, respectively) in which they do very much believe.

But for many people, the idea of a muse does seem to be, literally or figuratively, a question of spirituality or religion. Christian writers often refer to the Holy Spirit as their muse, and I've heard lots of people refer to receiving ideas from "somewhere else" when they are in a properly receptive mood...sometimes when they are in a state of altered consciousness or relaxation after meditation/prayer, fasting, substances, or sex.

In order for the muse to represent creativity's origin "somewhere else," one must either believe that the metaphysical realm of "somewhere else" actually exists, or that an individual's own unconscious mind is a realm so foreign to the conscious mind that it might as well be "somewhere else."

I'm in the latter camp myself, but if another mental model works for others, more power to them. There's no empirical right answer. (However, trying to convert someone from a belief which demonstrably does them more good than harm is definitely wrong.)

A spirituality-based conception of creativity may be very helpful to some people, while not working at all for others...just as some recovering addicts find twelve-step programs a real lifesaver, while others find such programs' continual emphasis on a higher power so cult-like that they can't lower their resistance enough to derive much benefit. Fortunately, other valid approaches exist. And I find others' approaches more interesting and worthy of respect than the narrator of my recent poem did.