A Question of Muses

[Bob Peale]

I'd like to open something up for discussion here, because I'd like to find out if I'm alone on this one. I have seen several posts here about writer's block and the absence of a muse, but to be perfectly honest, that's not my reality.

I have a habit of pissing people off when they ask me what a new story is about and I say "I don't know"; they think I'm being a smartass.

While I've been known to dablle a bit in sarcasm, the truth is, I don't.

What usually happens is, an idea grabs me: for instance, a man standing on a beach in a see through bathing suit. So I sit down and I start to write about it, describing how he got there, how he feels, what he does about it. Sometimes it turns into a story, sometimes it doesn't. In either case, I continue to write until I can't write anymore about it. Usually, I'll put it aside for a little bit to see if anything else develops. In this particular case, that small idea became "A Quick Bite To Eat". If you've read it, you'll understand that that bathing suit factors into the story, but it's hardly a story about a bathing suit.

Other times, it's not nearly so linear. The story I'm currently working on revolves three characters so far: a 28 year old well built black male, a 34 year old white women, and a 40 something year old white male who all live in a southeastern beach community. It started out as two handwritten pages about a divorced man moving to Atlanta, but that was 35 typed pages ago.

In all cases, I start when an idea grabs me, and I stop when I don't have anything else to say. It seems a lot like a muse to me.

Now, on the other hand, I've never sat down to write a story about ____________ (fill in the blank). Given the above process, I'd still be stuck on the first story.

Does anybody else have an experience like this, or do I need to spend more time with the little green men in the silver suits to try and figure this out?

 

[KillerMuffin]

It depends on what I'm writing. I write both ways, like you, I get a little what if...? question in the back of my head and write until the steam runs out. Sometimes the story ends up being good, or my friends and editors bully me into making it longer. I also write for publications whose acceptance policies are more rigorous, they want specific types of articles. So those I have to sit down, and I write them like I would a research paper. I write a thesis statement and then plan the article and go from there.

I am also trying to write a book and an eBook, both of these things require more planning than just write as I feel like it, otherwise they are too simplistic, sort of. I've been writing daily since I was able to put letters on paper and make words. I've given myself assignments, taken assignments from others, and set writing goals for myself.

There are days that I just can't write, that I sit there and stare at the cursor and nothing more than a word or two comes out. It's irritating and usually I have to resort to writing freestyle longhand in a little diary that I keep.

There is emotions that keep writers from writing, it's like ennui or restlessness. Some stories need to be left alone for a while, so that I can get perspective from them, others are done quickly. But there is also some discipline required if you write for more than just your own self.

 

[Weird Harold]

Welcome to the crowd.

Does anybody else have an experience like this, or do I need to spend more time with the little green men in the silver suits to try and figure this out?

One of the most common things I've seen in almost any interview with a writer is: "The characters just wouldn't let me write what I originally planned."

I'm talking about published interviews with the likes of Steven King, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, etc -- prolific writers all.

If you read DIRTY OLD Man's bio here at lit, you'll see that "the voice in my head made me do it" is my excuse for writing. Most of the time, he starts out with a "punchline" and the story develops as a way to deliver that punchline without tipping the reader off ahead of time.

 

[MaxSebastian]

The way I do it is to let ideas monkey around my little grey cells awhile before getting anywhere near a keyboard.

I have a little file where I write down the initial idea in three or four lines. When I've written that first thought, I go away and fantasise a little in quiet moments, thinking about what the various people involved in the story would be like, what they would be doing, where the tale would end up and so on.

Then if I feel like it, I'll write that story over a few nights. If I want to leave it, I have my file of other ideas to go to, where the story ideas that seem only three or four lines long have grown inside my noggin to a fairly detailed picture.

If men think about sex every six seconds, which on average I think is a little underestimation, there's plenty of imagination going on from which to pull something decent out of the bag. As for women...well, they'll always be mysteries to me, so I really couldn't say...

In conclusion: get an ideas book or file, save those fantasies up for a rainy day.

 

[CreamyLady]

Usually what sets me off is an image or mood, and sometime after I "see" it, I find myself writing. It's as if I'm channeling something; I keep typing until I run out of words.

I have lots of fragments on my hard drive.

However, my muse is an exacting creature. My best work generally leaves me sucked dry, and it takes a long time to re-create myself so I can write again.

 

[Ulyssa]

Quote

"We are not a muse," Queen Victoria.

 

[SpectreT]

Writing Urges

"Posessed" is the best word I have. Usually, it's a theme or image that simply grabs me and I plop down at my keyboard until I've fleshed out my idea. "Tuesday", the only example I can cite since it's the only example of my work that's anywhere anyone can read it, is a combination of a pair of characters (Both loosley based on ex-girlfriends) that had been in my skull screaming to get out for a while, and a discussion I had with a co-worker about how everything that seemed to go wrong waited for a specific day of the week (at work it was Wednesday, but what the heck). The story seemed to write itself from there, with Rachel basically telling me what had happened that day. If you're lucky enough to know one, get a cute redheaded goth girl of Jewish descent to read the thing to you, and you'll hear my muse, for that one anyway....

I've said before, and I'll say again, the characters >own< me. I once had a group of them arguing with me about the direction a story had taken. I was pretty embarrassed when I read those pages, and vowed to get more sleep before I let those folks out to play again.

 

[Ulyssa]

Play time?

This is dead serious spectreT--Sleeping before going back to your writing? Didn't these characters of yours come to you in your dreams and torment you? Stories have a bad habit of keeping our lives in torment--mine for example.

It was only a few weeks back as I was working on my continuing autobiography of my life with my first true fling---and suddenly I was pregnant with my first born once again. I lost sleep because I couldn't lay in the bed comfortably in any single position--I even had heartburn and a terrible sexual aching for that baby's father. (Much to my husband's dismay, had he known.)

Anyway the life of a writer is a form of purgatory. You wish all the accolades and the good stuff on your writer friends--but as for the real writer's Life (as in "Get one.") I wouldn't wish the rest of it on anybody.
_________________________________

Robert Heinlein once said something about writing which is doubly important to those of us who work in this bastard genre: Writing is an honorable occupation but it's best done in private and you have to wash your hands when you're finished.

[Edited by Ulyssa on 04-06-2001 at 11:17 AM]

 

[p_p_man]

Yes. Like you Bob I have no idea what I'm going to write once I start.

I get what most of us seem to get - that little 'what if?' in my head but sometimes I get so many 'what ifs?' I'm spoilt for choice. My next stage is to start a story with an attention grabbing sentence.

That bit is for me - I might well change it later, but rarely have felt the need to. What that opening sentence does is to kick start me into action. I write in word patterns, I like the sound and feel of words and quite often after I've written a paragraph I've looked back on it and recognised the drivel it really is. But by then I'm in full flow and editing the paragraph creates no problem.

The story line develops as I write.