Oi, the night makes a huge difference, you know that? For some reason I couldn’t fall asleep last night, and when I finally did it was another night of restlessness and nonsense like that. I don’t feel like I’m about to fall sleep while I’m sitting here, but I would have enjoyed some of the untroubled sleep I’d received over the last few nights.
Not all is gonna be perfect for us, you know?
The Muse and I were on about a few things last night. I got words of encouragement, and I offered a few in return, and I got into my novel again. Hey, that’s what The Muse does, right? Yeah, I know some of you have that muse that stands behind you with a 9mm pointed at your head, and they’re screaming, “I don’t give a shit, gimme the story!” Or, as my friend Kim say, her muse makes her go out and buy things because her muse wants to be showered in gifts.
Nope, not mine. My Muse only asks that I write. They know I’ll do a good job.
I can always save the presents for later.
I was into Chapter 43 a little more last night. The progression from last night was an interesting one, because I brought the last character in the chapter, Audrey, onto the stage and had her get comfy with the rest of the women, and from there they progressed into some good-natured kidding about skin tone and the sad state of Audrey’s nail care. No, that’s the way these ladies roll. I mean, when you have a couple of Ph.ds, a computer wiz, and an astronomy student in the room, laying about in their pajamas and kicked it in a ship zooming through the sky some 40 kilometer above a planet, you just want to take the one person in the room who doesn’t have a mani-pedi and give her one.
That’s where I left my characters, all nice and relaxed and enjoying some Me Time with each other . . . and tonight I’m going to put one of them through a bit of personal hell.
Why? Because that’s how I roll.
As I said yesterday, this chapter leads into the next, and the next takes on of the characters and plays with her mind–and not in a very good way. That chapter will be where she finally has to confront some fears, confront her feeling about another person, and confront their future together. The next character has a scene that I’ve thought about for a very long time as well, and I really, really hope I can pull those scenes off the way I’ve imagined them for so long.
That’s really a fear of my own, that the scenes I’ve seen for so long, the ending that I’m building towards, is going to come across sounding pretty ham-handed. We writers, we try our damnedest to make it all right. We do out best to put down the words that’s going to convey the perfect feeling. And at time we struggle with that sense that we can do it all as perfectly as we see it in our head, that all we have to do is find some words . . .
I’m not going to put myself through hell to get to that point, because I have a lot more confidence in my abilities than I did years back. I see these things, I feel them . . . I know I can find the words.
Hey, The Muse believes in me; why shouldn’t I?
