Frankly, I believe the muse is a fake: she pretends to live in the soul but doesn't; she lives in the mood. And that's where you've got her: you can make mood.
Insofar as photography goes, you simply need to consider the situation of the pro. He can't afford to await the call, and has to come up with the right solutions very time, and he usually does, to the best of his ability so to do. That ability, measured over time, marks him as either good or not good at his job.
Remove the financial imperative and, as they say, what do you got? No pressure that matters, just the option to laze or not to laze, as Shakespeare might have said. Awaiting the muse, as amateur, is nothing more and nothing less than the reality of can't be bothered making itself felt if not heard. Because in the grander scheme of things, it just makes no damned difference if one gets that snap or not, scribbles that paragraph with or without indignation, or just yawns and makes a cup of java.
To make a difference, it has to matter; if it doesn't matter, why expend the energy?
On the other hand, there is the question of therapy, in which case it does matter. For those of us with fractured lives photography can certainly provide moments of freedom from thought, periods where conscious thought can be suspended and the demons driven behind a temporary wall. In such cases, or at least in the hunt for relief if only from self, I'd recommend going out into the street, looking at the things around one, and taking note of the common absurdities and juxtapositions that can excite the eye. They are everywhere, and half-an-hour spent on one's feet can easily result in half a week at the computer which, of course, gives rise to yet another set of situations one might prefer to avoid. Nobody said life was perfect.
Mention is often made of planning, of starting everything off with a plan, a preconception. To me, that's part of the problem: there are already too many plans, both of our own and of others on our behalf. Get out of the grip of plans; use the freedom from them as you take that stroll down the street. Open your heart and mind and be random. Life happens, even of nothing's happening in a town near you because you can't see it.
Just don't sit at home waiting for bulbs to illuminate. They only do that in cheap Internet adverts.