Jessica is on vacation. I'm honored she is allowing me to horn in for a day.
Some famous writer-person, it is said, was once asked if he wrote on a schedule or just waited for his muse to strike. He replied, in what I like to imagine as a fruity quaver, "Oh, my dear. I always wait for my muse to strike. And she strikes every morning at ten o'clock."
Well, this is a fine little answer, it is, and I was mightily impressed by it--enough so that I made a point of parking my fanny in my writing chair the next day at ten o'clock. My writing chair faces my writing desk in my writing room, and my writing room has a little window in it to let the muse in. There's a chickadee house directly outside the window. It's a great set-up.
The ten-o'clock idea was working pretty well, except that punctuality has never been my strong suit, and let's face it: that writing chair is there all day and night. It's not going anywhere. Besides, if that famous writer-person was really all that great, I would have remembered his name, wouldn't I've? And no, it's not like remembering where I left my checkbook or what your birthday is or what point I was trying to make when I started this paragraph. Those are not the same kind of thing at all.
The ten-o'clock idea was working pretty well, except that punctuality has never been my strong suit, and let's face it: that writing chair is there all day and night. It's not going anywhere. Besides, if that famous writer-person was really all that great, I would have remembered his name, wouldn't I've? And no, it's not like remembering where I left my checkbook or what your birthday is or what point I was trying to make when I started this paragraph. Those are not the same kind of thing at all.
There are two chickadees hauling in grubs to that birdhouse at the rate of about one a minute. They're making a compelling case for watching chickadees.
Let's see. I have two basic assignments: just need to pick one. I'm at the point in my novel where I have to write the rape scene. And I'll be needing another post for my humor column. I just cut something out of the paper about a Canadian gang of feces-flinging bandits. There's got to be a use for that. Hell, if I can't work that into a reference to the Republican National Committee, I'm not even trying. I should have my Boffo Humor Writer badge ripped right off my chest, if they made one, which they don't, but they should. So that settles that. I can just set that aside, because it's going to write itself. Let's rev up the old muse for the rape scene, instead.
Rape scene. Rape scene. Not a lot of call for those in a humor writer's life, but it's just writing and a good writer can do it. It's simply a matter of careful word choice, proper visualization, and deliberately steering away from the trite and true. Hmm. What's another word for "thrust" and "throbbing manhood?" How about "poke at" and "aching..." wait a minute. This could totally work if we changed the setting to the urologist's office. Thank you, muse.
That really should be a scene in a whole new story, though. So that's three things I could be working on. But look: I'm already up to 480 words today. Is there any rule saying they had to be related words? There's a word for that, that jumping-around, rambling discourse. Dyslexic? No. Desultory. Wow. Pulled that one out of a hat, I did. Take that, checkbook, birthday and point. And look where we are now. 536 words. In the can, baby, in the can.
Murr Brewster
Visiting from: Murrmurrs
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