Have you ever had so many story ideas racing through your head that you wished your mind could just settle on one? Sometimes if you will it, it will be so. Then again, sometimes the act of trying to silence a voice makes your muse run off into the night. Yep, that’s what happened to me. It was to the point that I wanted to pull my hair out because I had a sequel, a new story idea and a sudden new inspiration warring in my head. I was like Batty Koda in Ferngully.
Every tilt of my head sparked a random, thought, idea, or storyline and my Fanfiction work as well. It was beyond frustrating and then, she ran off.
Who? My muse of course. Completely deserted me. I felt like I was on an island surrounded by an ocean of ideas but terrified of the water. Everytime I chased a wave my muse laughed at me and ran away with it. I was really starting to hate that bitch. But the muse is fickle. She would wash ashore and tease me with a somewhat complete thought and then go out with the tide when I reached her. I had plans, a deadline, a routine damn it! But nope, she didn’t care until one day, she did.
She came back with a vengeance and I’m finding myself unable to keep up but darn it, I’m writing again! #amwriting
So what do you do when your muse runs away? Be patient. Don’t fight it and let her come back to you. She will always find her way back and when she does, be ready. For what? To write of course. I’ve been writing at all hours. Keep a notebook on you or at least a smartphone so you can jot down notes. Beware of the voice recorder on your phone however. Unless you enunciate precisely with every word, a simple phrase like “it wasn’t that she didn’t like him,” can become “it wasn’t that she didn’t lick him.” Yup that’s right, and when you have dictated a long paragraph and then go back to transcribe you just go “huh?” And spend the next thirty minutes trying to figure out just where you were going with it.
Catching up with your muse? It’s kind of like the little twist in Under the Tuscan Sun. When you try to catch ladybugs, you can’t. But if you just lay back and relax under the sun. They find you. So just let your muse find you. Don’t push her, don’t yell at her, don’t get mad at her. Accept her for what she is, fickle, evasive, and damned inspiring so hold on with both hands when she’s there and wait patiently for her to come back when she leaves you. Because as you know, she will leave, but she always come back.
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