Who's Fighting Who Here?

OK, so I've been laboring under the impression that my muse is the one who runs the show. When things are rough and I can't put a subject and a verb together to save my soul, I've always grumbled about my damn muse, yelling at her for revoking her capricious gifts of creativity and inspiration. Something made me reconsider last night as I struggled to fall asleep for the second night in a row (ask me how tired I am today!). Maybe I'm the one fighting the muse. Maybe she's trying to force ideas and words into my consciousness, and I'm not letting her.

I can't remember exactly why I thought I might have a role in the "Where's My Muse?" game. It made sense to me at the time as I tried to get comfortable and prayed for sleep last night. Now my reasoning seems fuzzy through a two-nights-of-bad-sleep haze. Regardless of why, though, I realized that I need to work with my muse more. Instead of just complaining about her and trying to bend to her whim, I need to start chatting with her. It's time to make inspiration a two-way street.

That's why I'm going to force myself to outline HD. And sketch out Denise, Aidan, and Mike. That's the goal today. To just get that stuff done and stop fretting about perfection. Then I'll have the weekend to let it stew. Which reminds me....

I found out that my muse is as warped as I am when she gave me the inspiration for Velorin during my honeymoon. While Mark and I drove around the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Moab, Zion, Monument Valley, and Bryce Canyon, Ms. Muse gave me a map for Velorin, complete with what most of the world would look like, geographically speaking. And she also gave me a character that was a ghost, of a sort, which eventually helped me figure out the magic of Velorin. Because these ideas that she dropped into my mind were extremely cool and fun, I thought nothing of scribbling down notes on hotel stationery in between other honeymoon, uhm, activities. To add to my odd view of things, I also thought nothing of sharing my exciting ideas with fellow writers - including that they came to me while on my honeymoon. Enter the teasing and snide comments about my husband's sexual prowess - or implied lack thereof.

These jokes took me by surprise. I hadn't even thought about the implications of me getting ideas for a book during my honeymoon. Poor Mark. If I had realized that people would immediately assume that I came up with Velorin because I had less entertaining things to do, I never would've mentioned it. After a couple rounds of these wisecracks, I found my comeback. Anytime someone gave me hell about Mark's ability to please me on our honeymoon, I said that Mark's attentions were just that inspiring. With an appropriate nudge and wink and "if-you-know-what-I-mean" eyebrow wiggle, of course.

This weekend Mark and I are going out of town to celebrate our first anniversary. Knowing my muse, and my own recent illuminations, I will be scribbling all sorts of writing notes during our trip. But I'm not so sure that I'll be telling everyone about the circumstances in which these ideas came to me this time.