Image courtesy santarosa on Flickr.
How can it be that last night I was ready to give up on Foxglove, and now, after just an hour of mental meandering while trying in vain to sleep in, new ideas have me plotting, planning and getting ready to pull out the notecards and finally finish the outline?
The Muse is fickle. I’ve taken Holly Lisle’s How to Think Sideways course, and I’ve learned to manage my Muse to a certain degree, to trick it into giving up the goods, but there are still times when it’s elusive. I think a lot of that comes down to how distracted I am by other things, or how sick I am of dealing with the piece. Sometimes it’s because I’m in one of those moods where I never want to be a writer at all. I used to get ideas while dozing—that was my best creative time—but I find that more often than not nowadays, my mind starts circling and gets stuck in gear, and the only thing that can break me out of it is putting pen to paper and focusing.
Anyway, yes. I have a new direction to take the story in, a couple of ideas that alighted upon my imagination during those early-morning moments of half-sleep, and I think now I can finish the outline and write the rest of my 100,000 (or so) words.
