When Muses Attack
Meet my muse. He doesn't have a name. He resembles a character from the web comic Mega Tokyo, spiky red hair, something that may be a smirk on his mouth and a beer in one hand. My muse, however, is not into video games nor does he feel the need to do things in the buff. I would have to fire him if he did.

Before November of 2002, my muse had been somewhat reticent. He lurked in corners, gurgling beer and slanting his eyes in an attempt to look sinister. I usually just growled at him, and he would back off, leaving me to churn out things I ended up throwing away soon after completing them. If they ever got finished. I had characters with strong voices, but very few of them were making in onto paper in any useful manner. A majority of them were role-playing characters, trapped in worlds dependant upon the imagination of other writers. Not wholly unsatisfying, as some of them were able to show me some interesting things either in the stories I told with them or in the stories that were being played out on the gaming floor.

But then, I received an e-mail, forwarded to me by a friend from one of his friends who had decided to attempt this ?contest? called National Novel Writing Month, the goal of which is to write 50,000 words in one month, that being the month of November. I wasn?t going to do it. I was going to have to be out of town on November first. I didn?t think I would have time after that. I found myself writing that novel in my head as we drove to Lynchburg that morning. When we got back that night, I started writing. My muse was slobbering drunk, wide-eyed and howling like a mad man. Everything just came so easily. The characters were so alive. The plot (um, what plot?) was moving right along. I finished the story at just over 50,000 words roughly nine days before November 30th. There was just one problem. My muse decided that there was more.

Two more lengthy stories and one short story later, I was done with Talon Konstantine, his ship and his crew. Sort of. I knew I?d revisit some of that in later stories, like 2003?s NaNoWriMo effort. Of course, it didn?t matter to my muse. There were plenty of other characters to torture, plots to unravel and twists to turn. So we got to work.

All was well until late October. I had finished a detective story and had notes for at least five more. I was in the middle of the second in that series when National Novel Writing Month rolled around. Okay. No problem. I was sort of stuck on a part anyway. I figured I would get back to it when November was over. There was just one problem with that. My muse had other ideas.

By the end of November, I had written a novella of over 55,000 words, several journal entries which were mostly a hashing out of ideas for fiction, a four page story about a boy named Jack and a fifteen page story involving Jack and my detective character. And I had also done a good amount of research on Halloween and trickster figures to help with those two stories and that later gave rise to another story that has yet to be written. Good, I thought. Now that that?s over with, I can get on with what I?ve got sitting in these folders. There was just one problem with that. My muse had too many other ideas.

I watched December flit by in a whirl of Christmas lights and wine and heaps of receipts for all the overboard holiday shopping that went on. What little I managed to write, I never finished. My mind, prodded by my muse, would not stay still. I was constantly scribbling. Either on my PDA or in a notebook or on whatever scraps of paper I could find at work. I went back to old ideas I had abandoned way back in the ancient history of September. I started thinking again of something that had been floating around for four years. I poured over ten pages of notes I had written in mid October regarding a tale of revenge called ?Seven Breaths.? I had a sudden burst of fresh ideas for something I was handed at Dragon*Con back in August. I listened to Johnny Cash and had ideas for something completely different and started slogging down those words, doing research and feeling nothing but pity for the story I had been working on before November. All I had done to it was go back and delete the scene that didn?t work and did a little research on hypnosis.

January. The promise of a fresh start. A time to sit down and list all the goals for the coming year and to make the gut check required to stick to that plan. I had narrowed my list to three. I was going to finish ?The Church? if it killed me and everyone in it. It may still. I haven?t yet touched it except to highlight a few problems and scrawl out part of a reworked scene. ?Texas,? speaking too loudly to be ignored, would no longer be ignored. ?Raven?s Dream? (working title) would also get a little love. There was just one problem with that. I won?t bother mentioning what.

The following is a dramatization of events that occurred at some point in January.

?Night Driving,? my muse slurred.

?What?s that?? I asked.

?His cell phone is ringing. He knows it?s Mom. He doesn?t answer. He goes out onto the streets of Calgary where he?s spent the last four months recovering from a gunshot wound to the head and six weeks in a coma. His hands are tattooed with flames.?

?Would you shut the fuck up? I?m at work. ?Night Walking.? You said he went for a walk, not a drive.?

?Night whatever.?

?Go away.?

Slurp. A few moments passed in silence.

?Give my love to Rose,? my muse warbled.

?No.?

?Oh come on! What happens after he sees the woman? Maybe he like steals the money and rapes the wife and ? ?

?Muse??

?Yes, writer san??

?SHUT UP!?

??Kay.?

Silence, blissful silence followed for the rest of my workday. I struggled to get any writing done. I wrote bits and pieces of ?Texas,? slowly inching Jake into a treachery that would almost literally eat him alive. I did more research on Raven, discovering beautiful tales about how he stole the sun and the stars and the moon and how he made the tides roll in and out. I kept telling myself to read Revelations. Still haven?t done that.

Waiting for my car on a Monday morning. Last time I was here, I wrote about the guy wearing the squeaky dock shoes without socks and enumerated a few problems I was having with a certain character in my NaNoWriMo story. I thought I might do something similar. I opened my notebook and uncapped my pen. I dated the page and looked around the waiting room.

?Jack?s going to Disney World!? my muse squealed.

I began to write. ?Florida had always given Jack the creeps. Orlando especially, but he had never been sure why until he paused near Disney World and noticed a large dome of black magic surrounding the park. Curiosity being one of his better traits, Jack stashed his Honda near the Orange Bowl and headed into the Magic Kingdom.?

My muse clapped and laughed with the delight of a small child getting ice cream and cake at his birthday party.

That wasn?t supposed to be any more than a few pages of boredom. Nine days later, I?m still going. Jack, Bacchus and two trusty friends have fallen into Loki?s evil clutches. What will Jack do next? What is Loki?s master plan? I don?t know. I don?t wanna know.

?But I do!? my muse cried, like a spoiled child who doesn?t get the cake and ice cream the day after his party.

?All right, but ? ?

?Bones.?

?That?s my cat?s name.?

?He?s in a cave in Alabama with a sky disk. Jack, I mean.?

?Would you stop it? How the hell do you expect any of this to get written if you keep beating me upside the head with these things??

?I don?t.? My muse grins maliciously. He reeks of beer. And of ideas. ?All I expect you to do is lissen to me. You lissen, I feed your pen, your words feed me like mead, you lissen still and lissen lissen lissen! Man, I got so much shit in here in hurts!?

?Then go to the bathroom and leave me alone.?

?You are my depository of stuff, the vessel that holds all this spew that spews forth from my tongue.?

?That?s puke. You drink too much.?

?Come on. Here look. Picture of Cinderella?s castle. Picture of a cucumber. Speak a little Photoshop spell and ? tada!?

?I like the castle. I?m not happy with the cucumber.?

?We?ll fix it later. Come on. We gotta go over here now. Look, look, look!?

?I thought I had to lissen.?

?Yeah, that too.?

I got up from my chair, slowly. My knees ached from sitting with them bent up underneath me. Dusk was falling on an icy, workless day. I was finished with my Jack session for the day. It was time to finish reading my National Geographic, eat dinner, take a shower, watch hockey, maybe read Revelations like I had been meaning to. But first, there was one other thing I had to take care of.

My muse was beckoning me, waving his arms, splashing his beer everywhere, jumping up and down. I went to my toolbox and flipped it open. I pulled out the hammer. Nah, too messy. I pulled out a screwdriver. Nah, too pointy. I pulled out a vice grip. Hmm, now that has possibilities. I pulled out the roll of electrical tape and turned back to my muse.

?Hey, whatcha doing with those? That doesn?t look like a pen and notebook. Lookit! Loki?s crying!? my muse said. But his stupid, sloppy grin slowly faded. He could tell by the look on my face and the objects in my hands that I wasn?t playing around.

?I know what Loki?s doing,? I said. I grabbed my muse?s lips, stretching them an inch or two from his face. I clamped the grip down on his lips. He tried to scream, but all I heard was a muffled umph, like a hunk of snow falling off a tree or sliding down the slope of a roof. ?I know very well what Loki is doing, and I know just what Jack is going to do about it. The parade will happen. There will be consummation. I just need you to shut the fuck up and let me work, okay? Okay.?

My muse nodded as if he thought that meant I would remove the clamp and let him go. Oh no. No, not at all. I sat him down in a chair. I taped up his wrists and ankles. He umphed at me, but I just shook my head. ?You sit. You stay. You shut up. No beer for you.?

I knew it wouldn?t take him long to break free and send me spiraling across a landscape of idea rubble, drilling into dead, red rocks for signs of ancient water that might mean life and snapping pictures of alien dust fields where perhaps some kind of duel is taking place and the land is red from the blood being spilled. I knew I?d listen, too. But a writer who does nothing more than have ideas, make notes and do research is not a writer. I would have to write at some point.