Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Pixy Dust

Pixy Dust

I write about having a muse and the importance she (he) plays in imbuing a work with a spirit that takes something good and elevates it to excellence. That magical extra quality I call Pixy Dust. I have had teachers who made a mark on my writing that were excellent crafters and struggled on the side to make it as writers and sadly failed. I have a cousin who is an artist who should be a patron…his work is an empty shell. Conversely I sometimes see a written work by someone who appears poorly educated, inexperienced and clueless and yet produces an output that is full of pixy dust but will never go anywhere because it is poorly crafted.

To reach the highest level of excellence a writer needs talent, training, experience a muse and the willingness to work long and hard often without a great deal of encouragement. Often the encouragement we receive is uplifting but bad advice…We need to be able to separate the pepper from the rat poop. Sometimes we receive advice from people we instinctively recoil from and dismiss it out of hand….not a good move….our enemies ( competitors) often take from what we do, valuable insights, that we are blind to. I’m both amused and discouraged when I see political parties reject everything about one another and take the opposite position on every issue heedless of the kernels of wisdom in the other’s point of view. Yet we tend to do this very thing as individuals. Accept the truth regardless of its source, be it the Devil himself.

Hesiod said (I’m paraphrasing) “The greatest gift is being able to craft good from within ourselves, but there is also excellence in knowing the best went we see it.” Another term for this second tier of good is called “Judgment.” Those without judgment he termed “Worthless.” That is what most politicians are who vote a straight party ticket…. That is why in a Republic the people need to impose term limits on their elected officials and keep them from becoming entrenched.

As writers we need to create an environment for our muse that makes them want to live within us. Look at all these fantastic performers that are led away by excess and turn their bodies into sewers until the internal stink gets so bad their muses pack up and move out. All things in moderation should be our guide and hopefully our muses will stick around and continue to sprinkle Pixy Dust on our work. Without that we become like a famous Politician who will go unnamed…That guy who sounds good but is empty inside.