I’m very excited to be blogging for ERWA.
Back in the early days when I was just getting started as an erotic author,
ERWA was not only the go-to site for all of the latest calls for submissions,
but it was also a place to go for inspiration and encouragement. Now, here I am
writing what I hope will be inspiring and encouraging.

Today, I want to talk about inspiration,
because like most writers, I think about it all the time, and crave it
constantly. I want to talk about one of my favourite stories from Greek
Mythology, one that made me think more about inspiration than any other, and
that’s the story of Daphne and Apollo. In a nutshell, Apollo, the God of Light,
falls in love with Daphne, a woodland nymph. But Daphne flees his advances, and
when it becomes clear to her that she can’t escape him, she calls upon her
father to help her, and he turns her into a laurel tree to save her from
Apollo’s lust.

Perhaps it’s my naughty nature, but I’ve
always thought to myself, if I were Daphne, I would not only have let Apollo
catch me, I would have pursued him.
After all, he is the god of poetry
and music and art and wisdom and all those wonderful things that we writers
long for. A good fuck for a little wisdom and inspiration – a fair exchange,
I’d say. For some reason, I could never quite get my own private version of
that myth out of my head, nor the idea of that masterful exchange of power,
becoming the lover of the divine in exchange for divine gifts.

That got me to thinking about other lovers
of the gods, lovers who hadn’t been turned into trees before they were ravished
by the divine. Most of them got knocked up, true enough, and since the Greeks
were pretty misogynistic, that was the end of the story for the women-folk. In
short, they were pretty, some god took a fancy to them, knocked them up, and
there ya go! But, the result of their ‘inspiration’ was a child that was more
than human, a child with special powers, a child that was a savior or a hero.
Of course, Psyche didn’t get knocked up. She just married a god, bested her
mother-in-law at her own game and was made a goddess for her troubles.

But it’s when I started thinking beyond the
misogyny of the day to the archetypal message of the story that it hit me.
Daphne is really a tragic character because at the end of the tale, she misses
out on divine inspiration. She becomes rooted in one place, unmoving, never
able to do more than passively endure the changes of the world around her. All
she’s left with is her chastity. But Danae, when seduced by Zeus, gives birth
to Perseus, and Leda, also seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan, gives birth
to Helen of Troy and Pollux.  And the
stories of the children they give birth to are larger than life, exciting
adventures, stories that cause the rise and fall of empires, and all are the
result of divine and human coupling. Granted there was often no choice for the
women, or the men, the gods took a fancy to. Who could really argue with a god?
But the result was no less amazing.

Inspiration is like that, I think. We can
bargain for it. All of us writers have our techniques, the things that we do,
the rituals that work to get us to the story we need to tell. I walk and grow
vegetables. Some people listen to music, some people cook. I love hearing the
stories of how people get their inspiration, how people open themselves to the
Muse in an effort to get knocked up creatively. But I also love those times
when inspiration broadsides us, comes in a form we least expect and ravishes us
until we’re full and overflowing and we give birth to a story that we didn’t
see coming, a story that has a life all its own far more than we could have given
it if we’d simply sat down and planned it out.

Even leaving the Garden of Eden is a story about
seeking inspiration, about seeking to discover more, about becoming more than
ourselves, and about the price we pay when we’re willing to take that risk – powerful
stuff, all of it. And because the creative force will not be controlled, it
often doesn’t work out the way we planned it. It’s often expansive, explosive
and dangerous. It’s hardly any wonder that Daphne is seen as virtuous, and
chastity is the surface message for the rule of the properly behaved. But the
subversive message, now that’s another matter. The subversive message launched
a thousand ships, killed the sea monster, grabbed divinity and claimed it in
mortal hands, and wow! Writers do that every day, every time we yield to
inspiration, or grab it by the hem of its toga and refuse to let go until it
ravishes us, we re-create that archetypal story all over again.