May 28, 2015

You! Write Me A Story!

Said my muse in a tone that left no ambiguity on how she really felt.

For those of you who may remember my lovely and talented muse, she has been in a bit of a stew over the fact that I have not produced any solid writing for a woman of her many disciplines and personalities in quite some time.

So, being the spineless jellyfish when it come to dealing with my muse, "Contrary to your mistaken tone, I am writing you a story."

"Excuse me? Don't you dare use that tone with me!"

"What tone? I was simply correcting your incorrect perception of what I'm doing for you. Look, sometime ago you asked me to write you a story because you were bored with being on vacation with nothing to do except surf, swim and suntan. So off I went in search of a good story in which you could use your plethora of disciplines and personalities. Believe you me, it wasn't easy as it sounds. I searched high and low for a suitable story. I tried thinking of an original story, but had no luck. So then I tried thinking about a story to which I could continue working on, and immediately torpedoed that once I realized that the story in question was the story which shall not be named.

"So then I thought about a story that I could rewrite. A story that was mediocre at worst, average at best. So off I went looking for a suitable story that would work for you. A few..."

"Get to the point you. You're putting me and your loyal readers to sleep. As Graham Chapman would say, 'Get on with it!'"

"Spoil sport. Here. This is the story that I found to re-write for little ol' you."

The 411 is here.
She spat out her drink and said incredulously, "That?! My very first book?!"

"Yuppers. I found the original version buried seriously deep in a locked box stashed in a van down by the river where only the local gov'ment spook* had a copy of the key. I dusted off the remnants of another anti-guv'ment spook* from the manuscript and set about reinventing it in the genre that I love the most: paranormal/fantasy. Using the original as only the skimpiest of outlines, I got busy working on it in my free time (although I will admit the last time I worked on this was June 30, 2013). Over the past Memorial Day weekend, I wrote out..."

"Excuse me, wrote out? Like pen and paper wrote out?"

"Yes, my mercurial bodacious one. Pen and paper. And Mother Nature for inspiration, relaxation, contemplation, rationalization, education and exasperation. Like I previously stated, I last worked on it two years ago, and two years ago I wrote in the paranormal/fantasy genre, which my stories feature hybrid animal/humans, strange humans (gnarly looking dwarf who acts as security), normal humans, a touch of magic/occult, foreign languages and strange animals (piranha dog anyone?). All for fulfilling your need of being needed."

"Done?"

"Hardly. This past weekend, I managed to finish another chapter that I started earlier in May. Six handwritten pages which boiled down to two and half pages when transcribed totaling 1600+ words. So, does this start to fulfill your insatiable need to be needed?"

My mercurial muse hemmed and hawed for a minute or so, then turned on her heel, slapped my face with both her tail and her knee length hair and walked out of the room and to the mini-briefcase, where I have the first couple of pages to chapter three written out. She unzipped the mini-briefcase, squeezed all five foot eleven inches plus an equal amount of hair and her tail inside, then briefly stuck out her finger and wiggled it. Sighing, I walked over to the mini-briefcase and leaned in. She poked me in the throat and instantly the following words were BBQd into my brain.

"Failure to communicate, is not in my vocabulary. If you communicate, we will never have failure."

Then she withdrew her finger, zipped up, and left me to contemplate the eternal question of writing: What do I do next?

*I am a moderate Republican and those two yahoos make all good Republicans cringe.

(c) 2015 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.

14 comments:

  1. Long hair and tail - is your muse a mermaid?
    I wouldn't open that briefcase for a while. Let her cool off.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fortunately, no. More like a feline predator. And most definitely that briefcase will stay right where it is.

      Delete
  2. Hahahahaha, I love how your Muse slaps you around!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My muse is the be all to end all. And to quote Horace Rumpole, "She who must be obeyed."

      Delete
  3. No doubt she takes you on some wild rides across those pages! Interesting mode to re-use older material.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some very wild rides indeed.:D

      I have a good pile of older stories that were written over the years. Some average, some bad. This was an average that I self-pubbed via ASI. I wasn't thrilled with the end result, so I figure this would be the perfect opportunity to fix it.

      Delete
  4. Communication is good, but does not guarantee success. Sometimes it's even a guarantee for failure when the communication is the wrong thing to the wrong people.

    Arlee Bird
    A to Z Challenge Co-host
    Tossing It Out

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your muse is a bit flighty, I'd say.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just a tad, but overall, can kick some serious ass.

      Delete
  6. I'm glad you have a muse that you enjoy, but I hope I wouldn't get one like yours. She's a real handful.

    ReplyDelete
  7. HAHAHA! Rick Santorum is definitely someone who could use our agency's services. He just doesn't seem to know it.

    I'm interested in seeing how the redux goes, having enjoyed the first one. (Your novella, not his newest campaign.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Like I said, he makes genuine conservative-to-moderate Republicans cringe.

      So far, it's going okay. I'm only using the basic scene ideas, as opposed to simply re-working the current scenes.

      Delete

These days, the written word is to die for, so please leave a comment that shows me and everyone else the real you. All kinds of verbiage will be cheerfully accepted in the spirit it was written.