Last year, I went to the Florida Writer’s Association Convention for the first time.  They meet yearly in October in Orlando and hand out Royal Palm Awards to those, among the various Florida writers who submitted their work to be judged, who proved to be the best of the lot.

One of the many books written by Florida writers that I picked up there  was a cooking memoir called Mise en Place: Memoir of a Girl Chef by Marisa Mangani.  It still lies halfway down my pile of acquisitions, so I cannot say I have read it yet, for fear of toppling the whole pile.

But the play on words occurred to me while looking at the title.  Because what is Mise en Place, anyway?

The word mise in French means to set down or put, from mettre, to put.  So mise en place means to put in place. It’s the placement of all of your ingredients, chopped and pre-measured and ready, next to the place where you intend to do the assembly and cooking.  If you are or were ever a fan of Martha Stewart or other cooking shows, you have probably heard the term.

Top chefs have sous chefs and helpers to do such modest labor for them.  But who do we authors have?  No one.  We must do the slicing and dicing and measuring, deciding how much to put in, and what to definitely leave out, all on our own.  At least, until finally, we feel our work is ready for another’s eyes.

This process of being inspired to write, preparing to write, writing, re-writing and seasoning liberally with our own edits, changes, juxtapositions and corrections, before finalizing our work enough to show to others, we could call Muse en Place.

Muse

Everyone knows what a muse is, every artist, anyways.  Like the Greek muses in charge of each branch of the arts, a writer’s Muse provides a source of inspiration.

Although we writers often hesitate to call ourselves artists, and our Art, more often than not, feels like the hardest, most boring, lowest level of grunt work, still, there are times when some idea calls to us.  Some cause or ideal or sight or sound leads us by the hand to a story or a poem.

Some authors are inspired by people.  By beautiful people, or by people with beautiful brains, or interesting people, or people with lovely language.  Some are inspired by injustice, or other kinds of unfairness, wanting to promote the cause of the underdog in their work. Some find other forms of beauty inspiring, like the scenery in Nature, or paintings in a museum, or a lullaby from childhood.  Some find themselves mimicking voices and stories from another era, while giving their own modern spin on the plot. One thinks of the constant adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, or Jane Austen, or even the recent Huckleberry Finn inspired bestseller, James, which I also have yet to read, though it is on my list!

Whichever inspiration leads us along the path of creation, it is our Muse.

I’ve been watching an old detective procedural on Amazon Prime, lately.  If you know me well, you know that I consume detective procedurals like candy.  But the one I’m enjoying at the moment is called Castle, and it has the added fascination of having as the token amateur sleuth a bestselling author of thrillers.  So, the show is always poking fun at the profession of writing, and the true heroine is the police detective, who allows the novelist to work alongside her, and shows him to be the pretender, that an author invariably is.

The novelist often proclaims that this police detective is his muse.  She ends up being the basis of the leading character in his next thriller trilogy, as well.  Sometimes we love our muses so well, we want to encapsulate them in our books.

En Place

But what in the world does en Place mean?  If you do not speak French–and despite many years of forlorn and wasted effort, I do not—you may assume it is more or less the same as in English. According to my minimal understanding of the language, aided by a quick internet search, that is exactly what it means.  Placing the ingredients where they are needed before proceeding is the essence of mise en place, I think.

And so, converting the phrase into author-speak, what does an author need, in terms of ingredients to summon forth the Muse?  And where would be the best place to put them?

Here the analysis more or less breaks down, since writers do not, at least in my opinion, write in any one place.  Many have their habitual haunts: their own favorite writing nook or desk; hunched over in bed; musing, so to speak, on long walks or car rides to thankless jobs, or on wanders through the countryside; or suspended, in the thin mist between sleeping and waking.

Often this is where I encounter inspiration.  In the moments when I am about to wake but still cling to my dream.  Only to watch it disappear in a poof from my consciousness.  There will be a line that lingers in my brain and shows the vague promise of sprouting a poem.  Or a haunting image, like the eyes of a young woman, struggling to reach the boat I am in, just out of reach.  And me, helpless to do anything but watch her drown.  Both the profound and the disturbing, when they come with the strength of dreams, can inspire.

Perhaps, given that I have dreams like that, I should abandon my consumption of the crime genre, entirely.

Another place I find inspiring is the podcast/audiobook space, where I have found Jungian analysis podcasts, encouraging writer podcasts, and  an audiobook on the intersection of mythology and history related to the Knights Templar.  I find history and its synthesis and readaptation to the present very inspiring.  Such items include photographs, drawings and maps of long ago, political thrillers that bare the belly of the beast, and costume dramas featuring the elite, or royals.  Travel, if only via social media, also feeds my ravenous appetite for the new, whether in terms of landscape, architecture, zealotry, or corruption.

A writer’s life may often seem dull. Many writers have a penchant for always writing in the same place, or following certain repetitive habits, or isolating oneself more than the average person. Don’t let this dull surface fool you. It hides an iridescent sheen.  Much like corroded cast iron that needs seasoning,  this perceived dullness hides that which lies beneath.  The excitement of the brain while working on creative work is beyond interesting.  It is a flow, a series of dynamic yogic postures leading to a concentric whole.  Just because this work is invisible to others does not mean it is not happening.

Which items help harness the Muse?

The place where an author or poet should put such things is problematic.  Perhaps the most convenient carrying case is the brain itself, since most of the items needed are relatively lightweight and portable.

There are, of course, words, which most of us carry around in abundance in our mind’s portmanteau. Among these are both our innate vocabulary of words with which we are familiar and those words which we regard with fascination:  mise en place, for example.

At times, a small notebook, phone note-taking app or other reminder proves necessary, to gather phrases and ideas one finds along the side of the road and can’t bear to leave behind.  These items will not fit inside the brain except perhaps the brain of those with extraordinary powers of memory.  For the rest of us, a pocket and a pen or pencil will do the trick.

A camera is useful for ensnaring images, both in person and online, which one wishes to consult for inspiration, later.    Of course, one must be careful not to be so inspired by someone else’s work as to pass it off as ones own.  That way lies infringement.

Again, the phone is the ultimate multitasker of the author. I am told some people even compose on their phones.  I find this difficult, beyond the shortest forms of poetry.  Even a laptop keyboard seems too cramped, to me. 

What else might one summon to provoke the muse?  A lucky charm, a long-lost relative’s piece of jewelry, a perfume, a meditative chant, a favorite mug and brew?  The choice is yours.  I wish you every success in your creative endeavors, and hope you too will assemble the perfect Muse en Place, to magically, along with a good dose of hard work, transubstantiate your hopes and dreams into your creative reality.

For a description of my first Florida Writer’s Association (FWA) Convention in Orlando in 2023, read A Writerly Weekend.