Tag: Muse

Of Carrots and Sticks — and Cake

~ Margaret Lucke ~ 4 Comments
Margaret Lucke and her books

By Margaret Lucke

I’ve been staring at the blank page on my computer screen for what seems like hours when my Muse finally slouches into my office. She plops herself onto the soft chair in the corner. “Here I am,” she says. “Where’s my reward?”

“Reward!” I turn from the computer to face her. “What are you talking about? You just arrived. You haven’t given me anything yet. Not the first word of a sentence. Not even the glimmer of an idea. You don’t get a reward just for showing up.”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Pay for work that hasn’t happened? What kind of business model is that?”

“Ooh, I didn’t know what we do is a business.” She gets up, walks across the room, and peers at the screen. “Where’s the profit-and-loss statement? Are we making money? What’s my cut?”

“Never mind. We need to get busy on chapter 18.” I position my fingers on the keyboard, ready to type something brilliant. “When we left off, Jocelyn was waiting for Luke to show up in the empty house. She doesn’t know he’s the one who killed Gretchen. How shall we open the scene?”

My Muse crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m still waiting for my reward.”

“Later,” I say firmly. “We don’t get rewards until we’ve accomplished something.”

“What’s that then?” She points to my tea mug.

“Fuel.” I pick up the mug and take a big swig.

“Uh-huh. And this? Looks like a reward to me.”

Next to the mug is a plate with a tiny morsel (it’s a very small piece, honest) of dessert left over from last night.

“My breakfast,” I explain as I take a delicious bite. “Carrot cake.”

“Ah … carrot.” She nods knowingly. “The proverbial donkey’s reward. The farmer gives the donkey a carrot, and the donkey takes the farmer to the market. A fair arrangement, but you can see that the reward comes first.”

“No, no. The farmer dangles the carrot in front of the donkey. The donkey moves toward it, but the carrot stays just out of reach until they reach their destination. Only then does the donkey get its reward.”

“Can I have some of your cake?” she asks, just as I pop the last tidbit into my mouth.

I lift my hands in a gesture of apology. “Sorry.”

She rolls her eyes. “Poor donkey. It must feel as frustrated as I do.”

“Remember, the farmer also carries a stick, so he can swat the donkey’s behind if it doesn’t cooperate. The carrot is a positive motivator and the stick is a negative motivator. The idea is—”

“Motivate, schmotivate. If I were the donkey, I’d tell that farmer where to stick his carrot.”

She goes back to the soft chair to pout.

“Come on now,” I say. She doesn’t move.

I wheedle. I cajole. No response. I look around for something to use as a stick.

But I know that won’t work. Instead, I take the plate to the kitchen and refill it, this time with two slices of cake. I return to my office and set the plate beside the computer.

“Pull up your chair,” I say to my Muse. “The big piece is yours.”

She smiles as she scooches her chair forward and picks up the extra fork I brought. “Speaking of sticks, did you know Luke is bringing his hockey stick to the house with him? To use as a weapon against Jocelyn. No, wait, not a stick, a knife. That way he can hide it under his coat. Mmm, yummy cake!”

“Hey, he can’t kill Jocelyn. We need her for the rest of the story.”

“Don’t worry, she’ll save herself. A little more of this reward and I’ll figure out how. Make sure the next piece has plenty of frosting!”

My Muse and My Editor Talk About Challenges

~ Margaret Lucke ~ 2 Comments

“Yesterday my critique group was chatting about challenges we’re facing with our works in progress,” I announce as I walk into my office. “What would you two say are the biggest challenges when it comes to writing fiction?”

You two means my collaborators, my partners in crime—the Muse and the Editor who inhabit my head when I write.

“That’s easy,” says my Muse. She is lounging in the easy chair in the corner of the room, sipping from a cup of Earl Grey. “The biggest challenge is keeping her out of the way so I can let the ideas flow freely.”

“Ha!” snorts my Editor, who is sitting cross-legged on the desktop, a grammar book on her lap. “The biggest challenge is to keep her under control.”

“Control!” My Muse jumps up, and tea sloshes out of her mug. “Writing a story is a creative process. It’s all about inspiration. It’s not something you can control.”

I run to get paper towels so I can control the rivulet of tea that’s flowing across the floor.

“Writing is only ten percent inspiration,” the Editor is saying when I return. “It’s ninety percent perspiration. You do the easy part.”

Getting down on my hands and knees, I mop up the spill.

“Easy! You think coming up with ideas is easy? It’s grueling work.” The Muse clasps a hand to her brow and nearly kicks me as she flops back into the chair cushions.

The Editor blows a Bronx cheer. “Without me, your ideas would run around wildly all over the place. There’d be no coherence, no order, no story at all.”

“Nonsense,” the Muse retorts. “All you do is pester me about little stuff. ‘That word is spelled wrong. Put a comma here.’ Commas, shmommas. Who cares?”

“Who cares!” The Editor yells as she throws the grammar book to the floor. “Everyone should care. A misplaced comma can change the whole meaning of the sentence. Remember that time when—”

The Muse sticks her fingers in her ears. “La, la, la, la, la … ”

I toss the soggy paper towel into the trash. “Come on, you two, you know we’re all a team. You each have an important job to do.”

They’re too busy arguing to pay attention to me.

“You’re lazy,” shouts the Editor.

“You’re rigid,” yells the Muse.

“Airhead!”

“Stick in the mud!”

I raise my hands in surrender. “Enough! I’m getting out of here. I’ll see you two later, when you’ve settled down.”

“Wait a minute,” the Muse says. “You can’t leave.”

The Editor chimes in, “Yeah, what about our schedule? We’re supposed to be getting some writing done.”

As I walk out of the office, the Muse says, “There she goes again. Know what the biggest writing challenge really is?”

“Yeah,” says the Editor gloomily. “It’s getting the author to sit down and do it.”

The Terrible, Necessary, Unavoidable Triumvirate

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 7 Comments

by Janis Patterson

In last month’s blog I talked about musery, and how the concept of a mythological goddess whispering ideas and words into a writer’s shell-like ear was a catch-all used to combine the rock-bottom basics of inspiration, imagination and skill. You see, to be a writer – a writer of any worth, a writer with any hopes of publishing – you need all three.

Inspiration is the beginning; this is the start of creating something from nothing. A ghost of an idea. An isolated incident that could be pampered and grown into something more. A starting place.

Imagination is what takes the ephemeral, insubstantial bud of an idea and feeds it, molds it, multiplies it into an acceptable storyline. Like a cook creating a recipe from the beginning idea of two ingredients, a writer will spin a complete storyline, adding in heroes and villains, buffoons and sages, problems and victories, and eventually bring it to a desired and logical conclusion.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well, it will come to nothing if the writer does not possess the final part of the triad – skill.

In this context the simple word ‘skill’ has a labyrinth of meanings. The most basic form is what we used to call fifth-grade English – mastery of spelling, grammar, sentence structure and punctuation. In other words, the solid skeleton of language on which you can hang the gossamer flesh of your story.

Unfortunately, these days it seems that correct and standard usage of English is if not a dying at the very least a fading art. Typos and plain mistakes that would have been unthinkable a couple of generations ago are now not only tolerated, but hardly noticed. Where once a single typo in a published book was a point of shame, now it is regarded as a triumph.

But this post is not to rant about the relaxing of standards, it is to point out the need for plain old skill to use the language to create your world and your story. Everyone knows the example of ‘eats – shoots – and – leaves’ and its two very different meanings. ‘Eats, shoots and leaves’ is a very different sentence from ‘Eats shoots and leaves.’ A single comma changes the sentence from the reporting of a violent action to a descriptor of an herbivore’s diet.

It’s the same thing with ‘she took a peek’ (i.e., she snuck a quick look) to ‘she took a peak’ (she conquered a mountain top). Such mistakes can pull a reader out of the story in an instant, to say nothing of confusing the action. Doesn’t make the author look very good, either.

Our imaginations might be our stock in trade, but our command of language – and our skill in using it – are what makes it possible for us to communicate our stories to others. Inspiration, imagination and skill – the essential tools a writer must have.

Musery, or Conversations With A Goddess

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 7 Comments

by Janis Patterson

On one of my writers’ loops the other day a bunch of us were lamenting the fact that we all couldn’t just write and leave the business side of publishing to someone else. These days however you are published you have to deal in the non-creative side of the book industry – publicity, editing and all the rest. As we all were having the same problems, someone said she was grateful for other writers, as ‘misery loves company.’

Well, you know I can’t leave a single quip unturned, so I popped back, “Shouldn’t that be musery?” My rather smart-ass remark has turned into a… well, not a phenomenon, but a comment that is spreading. ‘Musery’ is a growing concept.

So what is Musery? It is taken from the legend of the Muse, a mythological construct of some goddess or another who is constantly whispering fantastic prose into a writer’s shell-like ear… which all writers know is pretty much wishful thinking. Even if you get ideas constantly peppering you like beneficent shotgun pellets as I do, ideas by themselves are pretty useless – nice, and a necessary beginning, but by themselves pretty much useless. No book ever came from ideas alone. It would be sort of like trying to live in only the foundation of a house.

Ideas (and it takes many to make a book) are only the beginning. You need believable characters, many complications, conflicts… the whole menu of writerly tools. Many of us need the interaction and brainstorming with other writers, and then there is research and finally – and perhaps most importantly – a command of the language that can make the whole heap of disparate parts into a readable and hopefully enjoyable book.

This seemingly magical combination of elements is the essence of Musery, which boils down to the basics of inspiration, imagination and skill. Done right, it appears effortless, which is probably the basis of the popular belief that some magical creature dictates the finished product to the writer, who has only to write it down, thus perpetuating its own myth that writing a book is a piece of cake that anyone could do if they only took the time.

Yeah, right. The fastest way to reach your Muse always has, is and always will be hard work. Now I have to go propitiate mine with a couple of hours at the computer.