Muse Madness!

I am usually crazy confident about titling my works, but coming up with a title for my winning work in the 2016 Lake Merritt Flash Mob Play Festival was harder than writing the play itself!

The original title was "Disgruntled Muse." I didn't want an adjective-Muse title, since I just re-named my newsletter (muse-letter?) "Generous Muse." And I have worked hard to have a positive relationship with my muses... want to keep it that way!

I came up with over 50 potential titles, based on the contents and theme of the play... with help from a rhyming dictionary and thesaurus, of course!

1. A Goose Waits in Oakland
2. A Kick From a Muse
3. A Muse and a Goose
4. A Muse Crosses the Street
5. A Muse Grows in Oakland
6. A Plague of Muses
7. A Push from the Muse
8. Abused by the Muse
9. Bossy Muse Blues
10. Can't Stop the Muses
11. Choose the Muse
12. Choosing the Muse
13. Confused by the Muse
14. Control your muses
15. Cuddle the Muse
16. Dances with Muses
17. Demands of the Muse
18. Distressing the Muse
19. Don't Mess With the Muse
20. Embracing the Muse
21. Goose from a Muse
22. Goosed by the Muse
23. Juice of the Muse
24. Kill my muses
25. Mad at the Muse
26. Make Way for Muses!
27. Muse Calling
28. Muse Madness
29. Muse Sings the Blues
30. Muse Trouble
31. Muse-a-palooza
32. Muse, Don’t Abuse
33. Museday Afternoon
34. Muses Made Me Do It
35. Not A-mused.
36. Perfectionist Muse
37. Persnickety Muse
38. Plagued by Muses
39. Provoking the Muses
40. Refusing the Muse
41. Seduced by the Muse
42. Seize the Muse
43. Shaking the Muse
44. Sing with the Muse
45. Slave to the Muse
46. The Madness of the Muse
47. The Muse Moves 
48. The Trouble With Muses
49. Tighten the Muse
50. Turn of the Muse
51. View from the Muse
52. Voice of the Muse
53. Wealth of the Muse

Sifting out the negative ones (wanting a more neutral tone for the title), I selected the top six that I thought were memorable, evocative (of a feeling or another cultural reference), and carried the right sort of exciting energy:

• Be Mused
• Bossy Muse Blues
• Choose the Muse
• Muse Madness
• Museday Afternoon
• The Trouble with Muses

And then I set about pestering friends and family. I asked a few dozen writers and other creatives to vote for their favorites. Of course, most of them were much more clever than me, suggesting even more truly wonderful ideas, such as:

• If you Give a Muse a Muffin 
• Win Some, Muse Some
• Muse En Scéne
• Blue Suede Muse
• The M-Spot
• Afternoon with the Muse
• BeMuse
• Beggars can't be Musers (however, in my play, they can...)
• Dark Side of the Muse (my personal fave)

Ultimately, the poll results were clear. Be Mused (which my aMUSEing husband shouted out a week before I thought of it), won definitively. An equal number of votes were split between The Trouble with Muses and Bossy Muse Blues, with a few clear votes for Muse Madness.

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." —Paul Simon, Graceland