Put Your Muse To Work!
- Brian K. Morris
- Mar 15, 2018
- 4 min read
I recently read a great quote from Jack London. He said, "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
A lot of us somehow got the idea that our muse was this delicate angel, dressed in gossamer and moonbeams. And if she liked you -- IF she liked you -- she'd sooth your brow with a gentle touch and whisper a plot into your ear that would immediately turn into a best-seller.
Well, my muse often proved to be as distracted as I was in those days. She was pretty mischievous, to boot. She showed up irregularly and the only time she granted me a novel idea, it was so awful that when I completed the first draft, I put it into hiding. In fact, when I moved from Illinois to Indiana a few years ago, I destroyed the manuscript. I told anyone who'd listen that I'd rather a sex tape with me and a barnyard animal pop up than anyone read even a paragraph of that book.
Anyway, I run into would-be authors who claim they don't have any ideas, that they MUST wait on their muse to visit them.
Phooey on that! Sorry, but as I've outlined in my Wednesday blog, you CAN train yourself to generate plots without supernatural intervention. In fact, if you're a PROFESSIONAL writer, you'll be expected to do just that.
It's not a matter of "artistic temperament" ... it's your bleeping JOB to create stories.
*By "professional," all caps or not, I mean you are getting some form of payment for putting words together in an effective, pleasing way.
So train yourself to find stories. Ask "What if?" when perusing a newspaper or watching the news or playing a video game or listening to music or whatever you're doing. Write down those ideas and let them perk (or fester, in some cases) before doing it all over again, again and again, until a story demands to be told.
The more you do this, the easier it will be to do it regularly. Writers like Walter B. Gibson and Lester Dent destroyed typewriters with the force of their fingertips striking the keys. Gibson wrote a novel a week plus articles and rewrites on his work on The Shadow. Dent did the same thing, but on a biweekly schedule.
As I said four paragraphs ago, writing professionally is a job. Does a plumber feel the need for a pipefitting muse? What if your local doctors, nurses, bus drivers, police, or bank tellers just weren't "feeling it" today? Don't disappoint your audience. Start writing like your job depended on it.
NEXT WEDNESDAY: How To Parlay Those Credits You Probably Don't Have
NEXT THURSDAY: Feeling Confident About Your Writing, Even If You Have To Lie To Yourself
NEXT APPEARANCE: On March 24th, I will be at the ART IN EQUALITY CON at the Savoy Recreation Center, 402 Graham Drive, Savoy, Illinois. In addition to my own publications, I'll be joined by former wrestler/actor Bishop Stevens, cosplayer Alexa Heart, animator Philo Barnhart, Silver Phoenix Entertainment's Creative Director Charles D. Moisant, writers Monica O'Leary, Austin Malcome, Ariana R. Cherry, and J.W. Wright, artist Candice Comelieri, and great friends such as Sage Stafford, Zitania and Amaris Moon, and Action Jackson Comics.
For more information and tickets, go HERE!
SPECIAL NOTE: My newest book, The Haunting Scripts of Bachelors Grove, is currently on sale. It's part memoir, part grimoire. The first half deals with my entry into writing indie comics and joining Silver Phoenix Entertainment. I print four of my comic scripts for The Haunting Tales of Bachelors Grove, three of which have not been produced yet. Then I add four horror prose tales, three of which are NEW. All this behind a great cover by my Art Sherpa, Trevor Erick Hawkins, over 300 pages of terror and history for only $19.95 in paperback, $2.99 in e-book (FREE if you belong to Amazon Prime). If you have any questions for me, write to me at Brian@RisingTide.pub. No attachments, please, for security reasons.
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