I know you’ve heard many authors talk about their ‘muse’ and how fickle they can be. Well, mine is no different. Well, almost no different. He’s such a lazy, unruly thing, that most days I can’t get him interested in anything. I say he but who knows what the muse really is. It’s that little voice in the back of your head. The thing that whispers story plots in your ear and can show you entire scenes in your head. It’s a wonderful tool…when said muse hasn’t deserted you.
Mine, deserted me. The lazy bum. Took off for a few months on an extended holiday but is back now, apparently. I’ve been whizzing through stories like a wild thing and it’s fun and scary and quite the rush. I’ve always been a slow writer. Always. From way back in 2002 when I sat down at the computer and started writing my very first fanfic. It took me ages to write it but…I finished it! Eventually. (And no, I hope no one ever reads them. I still cringe while looking at them. Talk about awful stuff!) I can’t even remember how many completed stories I have but it took years to get some of them done and when I took the leap into original fiction, that slow, dragging process came with me. And hung around for 3 years.
I’ve been writing for 6 years now and it’s taken me THAT long to learn how to turn off my internal editor and just…write. I think Nora Roberts called a first draft story, Word Vomit, and that’s what I do now. Just spit it all out and pretty it up in the edit process. Which brings me to the entire point of this entry. The muse wants two sandboxes to play in at once!
With Wicked 2 finished (its in edits) I should be working on Wicked 3, Christian’s story, but what did I do yesterday? 18 pages of a brand new story! I’m still flabbergasted at how quickly it all came. It was like some wild, wicked rush of words and flashes of scenes in my head and when I turned the computer off last night, me hero had just come to the heroines rescue, again. I feel bad for Christian. He’s been waiting for months to tell his story and now Cole, my new hero, has bullied his way to the front of the line and demanded attention. I’m not going to complain too much. He’s quite delicious and playing with him *cough* has been in no way a burden.
2009 looks to be a promising year. I have 4 stories already on the Alinar release schedule (just in the first 6 months) and with as quickly as plot ideas are coming to me, it’s really hard to tell what the latter part of 2009 will hold. It’ll be fun to see where my muse takes me. He’s already made up for his slack behavior in a major way. Let’s just hope he doesn’t fall off the wagon and pick up the bottle again.
