*Crickets, Crickets*
es, it’s been quite quiet around here. Monday and Tuesday were busy days, and Wednesday and Thursday morning were full of errands, and on Thursday evening, for lack of a better term, I had a burst of divine inspiration concerning my story.
It was actually the moment I’d been impatiently waiting for. I had a handful of great characters, and some rough plot ideas, but it just didn’t have that spark. I’d write and write and go back to look at it, and think, It’s missing something. I just wasn’t getting it. There was just . . . something I lacked, something the story needed that I hadn’t gotten yet.
I spent my down time this week rereading the Preacher series, because I needed something dark, funny, and fucked up to give me a jump start (this is less like giving your muse a nudge and more like beating it over the head with a brick). I sat at my computer desk with the book’s Open Office file sitting open, music playing, rereading the adventures of Jesse and Tulip and that poor, rotten piece of shit, Cassidy, giggling and shaking my head, humming along with the music.
Thursday evening, with everything else that needed doing having been done, and the last Preacher issue finished and set aside, I sat down in front of the computer with my trusty cup of coffee and a pile of cigarettes, and plunked desultorily away at the keyboard. I was working on yet another new start to the fucking book, because while a couple of others had been fun, they weren’t what I was aiming for.
I tossed words at the new start, frowning, grousing to myself, and then, as the keyboard sometimes will without first consulting me, it shat out something interesting.
”Hey, what was that?” I said, and reread what I had just written. “Huh. Right there at the beginning like that? Really? But I was saving that for later.” I mean, it was a bit that I had figured needed a lot of working up to, and I didn’t see how it was going to work right at the start like that, and then it came to me.
”Oh.” I said to Jazz, who was sitting in my lap, chilling out. (She’d run out of things to bark at.) “Oh! Oh, shit!” I exclaimed, and started typing.
Ten thousand words and many hours later, I had, finally, a start. I had it. I had beaten my muse nearly to unconsciousness, and she had produced out of self defense. The story was sitting there in my head, fully formed and plotted, ready to go. Just what I had been waiting for.
Now all I need to do is type the bitch out. Right.
(Photo credit: Preacher.)
May 4th, 2008 at 11:27 am
I love it when that happens.
Good job.
Ps. I’m working on a painting for you.
When i’m done I’ll either bring it along or send it thru mom.
JavaElemental Reply:
May 12th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Ooo. I can has picture. I can’t wait to see the painting!