My Muse Has ADD

A few months ago, I wrote a post about how I was all high on steroids and working feverishly on a novel that I had been writing in my head for years. It was going great and then...pffft went my inspiration. I still work on it from time to time, but I feel sort of..."eh" about it.

Then I started working on a nonfiction thingy about dealing with a special needs child. It would be funny! It would be real! It would be awesome! But somehow...not so much with the awesomeness. It was more like, "Dang, it's hard to write this. Why can't I write this like I write the blog? Oh, right. I can't make up words and write in all caps and mention the Filing Cabinet. Fart." So it fell by the wayside, too. I still conduct imaginary interviews with Oprah about it after I drop Jeffrey off, but Ms. Winfrey and I also discuss things like my spiritual journey and growing herb gardens. Also, we talk about how I was hired to star in the film adaptation of my latest project. (More on that in a sec.)

Failing with the nonfiction thingy, I brushed off a manuscript for a YA fantasy that I'd been toodling around with a while back. I like the story, but unfortunately have lost my notes and so am having a hard time getting into it again.

Then one day, I passed a new salon/spa and BWONK! my muse smacked me upside the head. Keep in mind that I have never seen the inside of a spa and can think of few things more horrifying than letting somebody pick the dead skin off my toes before rubbing my feet. I...just...can't...ugh. UGH. And I hate getting my hair washed by other people and loathe having my face messed with and the idea of a massage just makes me go, "Eh. Part deux." So...I don't know anything about spas. And yet, here I was with Blanche breathing down my neck as I drove to pick Jeffrey up.

Blanche? She's my muse. I named her Blanche after I came up with this sentence, which is one of my favorite things I've ever written: "I imagine the muse to be sweaty and languorous, named Leonora or Blanche and carrying a magnolia blossom in one hand, a flyswatter in the other." The thing about Blanche, bless her heart, is that she's frickin' nuts. She does things like present me with one sentence or phrase and say, "Okay, off you go."

She'll interrupt a perfectly good romance novel with the idea of a character from a YA science fiction novel modeled after Little House on the Prairie.

She wants me to write poetry one day and a screenplay the next and will get me fired up enough to jot down a fiery criticism of the BCS system (Are you kidding me that the Dawgs are going to play sharding HAWAII? Arrrggghhhhh.) It's just lunacy on her part. Sheer lunacy.

Anyway, she's all chattering on and on about inciting incidents and climaxes and character arcs and diagrams of houses and family trees. And so by the time I get to school and get settled into my office (more on that in another post), Blanche is practically sitting on my lap and typing out several pages worth of notes in which I've pretty much outlined an entire book from start to finish. I've got one piece of research that needs to be done before I can really sink into the work, but basically, I've just got to write out the chapters. That's it.

BUT--Blanche apparently took off to Boca Raton for a little R and R, because for the life of me, I can't get back into the feel of the story. Drives. Me. Nuts.

So, if you see my muse wandering around, poking in the shops at Little Five or, you know, checking out the climbing wall at your gym, could you please direct her back this way? You'll know her by the fly swatter.