Baby Evil Writers 101: There Is No Muse

Baby Evil Writers 101: There is no Muse

Julie Butcher

If one more person tells me they didn’t write today because the muse is gone on vacation I’m going to smack them hard.

There is no muse. Let me repeat myself, there is no muse.

The only thing there is, is to put your butt in the chair and open the document and think about the story until the words hit your fingers. There is self-control. There is hard work. There is stubbornness. There is a brilliant mind that wants to fritter away time on twitter and facebook and favorite TV shows. There is not, however, a freaking fairy that bops you on the head until they make a hole and shove a story into your brain.

Stress saps creativity. Hunger sucks main characters dry. Illness makes your story about bodily fluids which is nasty. But the straight truth is that you are your own muse and that if you don’t take care of yourself and eat and drink and sleep—you won’t write.

Quit making excuses that are the equivalent of telling a cop that you weren’t speeding, the car was going too fast because and invisible Bigfoot had his hairy appendage on the gas pedal. Listen to me, we both don’t believe you. Not one little tiny bit.

If you believe yourself about the muse thing then you are in big trouble. Also you should probably seek professional help.

I know people who were going through horrible experiences in their lives and yet still managed to write and publish a story. If you want to be paid money, then it is a job and sometimes jobs are hard WORK. If it were all fun and games then you would get no money and it would be called PLAY.

We don’t believe in a muse. We believe in work. If you want to keep fooling yourself, then go away from me. When I don’t write it is because I am stressed or lazy or sick. There is no invisible force stopping my fingers. There is only me, on the couch watching television. Sometimes there is me, working in the garden. But you know what? I know what I’m doing. I don’t blame others for me being lazy or evasive.

Suck it up people. Be honest with yourself, and get your butt in the chair.

Stopping to Re-fuel

We talk a lot about the myth of writer's block, that if you want to be a writer, then you write. Sometimes, the words flow easily and sometimes you work at it, but not buying into any sort of rubbish about blocks and elusive muses goes a long way toward keeping a solid work ethic. It also gets the books done. 

But tapping into that well of creativity with such force and frequency, can still have side effects. Whether all our ideas branch from three inevitable conflicts, (man v somebody) or whether we reach into the collective unconscious to spawn our ideas, or pluck them unceremoniously from our navel, they still have a source, and that source can get  a little dry from time to time. 

Recently, the flow of creativity from my little wellspring, slowed dramatically. It went from a flood to a trickle to a big old dust bowl in no time flat. 

To be fair, I still had a lot of ideas. I just didn't really have the energy to write them. I poked and prodded at the words, but my output was pathetic at best. Oddly enough, all kinds of other creative endeavors sprang to mind. Weaving, painting, singing Opera (very badly) everything I wanted to do was  art, but it was nothing to do with the art that was on my to-do list. 

I was out of gas. It wasn't writer's block at all. I'd just forgotten to refuel. I'd spent more than I took in, and my engine stalled.

Then a friend brought me a copy of a book that I've been dying to read. I couldn't resist it. It was written by my all time favorite author, Christopher Moore, and it was about my favorite topic to boot. I realized, as I cracked the book and sank into one of my favorite wordsmith's worlds, that I missed reading. In all my rush to make stories, I'd forgotten to read them....again. 

You have to read. 

So I devoured, Sacre Bleu, and then I kept going. I read two more books, three more. I devoured all the things that had been waiting for me to have time to read them. I fell in love with other people's stories again, an so I remembered why I wanted to write in the first place. The wellspring, not surprisingly, filled up again. Almost by magic. 

I didn't have to fight writer's block, because it went away. I didn't have to force myself to write because I wanted to again. The tank was full. 

I know we're supposed to read to learn our genre, to study story theory and structure and the things that are happening in fiction around us, but if you ask me, a better reason, (certainly, a more fun reason) is just to remember how much you like it. It felt like a vacation, reading, and dang it, we all deserve vacations. 

That's something writers tend to forget too. I know, I usually see ANY free time as a great chance to work. Next time, just maybe, I'll remember reading a good book (or four) is a nice alternative. 

It's Not Poisonous Unless You Put It In Your Mouth

Well, not exactly. For the most part, however, that's an accurate assumption, and it comes across the finish line as one of my very top "Pet Peeves."

Snakes are not poisonous...not even if you eat them. Neither are spiders, though I'm not sure there's enough people attempting to swallow either to be certain. Maybe a toxic species or two exists...but only if you eat it or rub it on your skin or all sorts of things you shouldn't do with snakes or spiders.

Poison, you see, is ingested or touched. VENOM is injected and that, my friends, is what those lovely fangs are for.

This is something that you need to get right, at least if you're writing about bites of any kind, evil giant insects, reptiles or anything venomous...VENOMOUS, meaning they inject an unlucky character through a bite of some kind. 

Poisonous critters do exist. If your Heroine takes to licking random frogs in the Amazon, she might certainly be poisoned. In fact, she should probably keep her hands off unidentified amphibians as well, as some toxins can quite easily take effect through skin contact. So, feel free to kill by poison if you choose, but please, make sure it's not a biting injury..

Bite=fangs(or grooved teeth)=VENOM

If you think about it, it sounds cooler anyway. I mean, many butterflies are technically "poisonous" but if one bit you it would probably just tickle or something equally harmless. 

Unless it was a venomous butterfly...and that's a story I just might have to write some day. 

Baby Evil Writers 101: The Rules
Julie Butcher

When I first started writing, I went to every single blog post and website to see if I was doing it wrong. The problem with this was that everyone said something different.

You can find rules all over the internet. Never use then, never use comma and then! Never use an adverb, or an adjective, or a noun. Oh my goodness go and cut every single word ending in –ly, or –ing! 

Oh my darling baby minions of evil, You must follow the rules.

Or maybe not.

I tried to follow all of the laws or rules or whatever you might call them. I went through an entire manuscript to take out *that* and *then*. And guess what? It totally made the writing stupid. The music and voice had leaked out with the giant holes.

Guess what else my darling evilettes? If your writing is compelling and your characters enthralling, you can break any rule you want.

The biggest and only rule you need for writing is to make each sentence count. Every single word should be necessary to carry your plot forward. Each sentence should be complete in itself. If you take a sentence out of context, it should still sound lovely and make sense.

To do this, try reading your story out loud. The stupid sentences will jump out at you. You'll sit and wonder what came out of your mouth. I swear it will help.

So quit googling the rules and spend the time making sure the words on the page mean what you want them to mean. Tell your story without bogging up your brain with too many laws of writing.

Because really, there aren't any.

Pet Peeves

There's nothing I love more than a book with animals in it. Sidekicks, pets, familiars, you name it, I'm in. But there's nothing worse, nothing, than when animals are done wrong. If you're a pet person, you'll know what I mean. If you're a horse person, you're probably already groaning.

I spent five years working in the pet industry. I've shared my home with every kind of pet you can pretty much get. I've had horses, rodents, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, arachnids, cavies (you know what a cavy is right?...read on!) marsupials, and various ordinary and not so ordinary mammals. I'm not a veterinarian, but I put her kids through college back in the horse years. Trust me.

I'm going to start with horses, because I think not only are they a source of massive literary inaccuracy, they're also an untapped gold mine of plot twists. If you plan to put horses in, I suggest either owing one, borrowing one or, even better, signing up for riding lessons. Make sure you pick one of those sagging barns with the muddy pastures that likes to give the "full horse experience" though.
That usually means you'll be mucking stalls, dragging feed buckets around, picking hooves and doing a good deal o the work required to really get to know horses.

So aside from glaring technical inaccuracies like putting a "martingale" on the horse's head. (No. Nonono) the biggest problem I see with horses in fiction is that they are often metamorphosed into big, somewhat useful, dogs. So very not right. 

A horse is not a cuddly puppy. Even a very well trained horse. Even Tonto's horse. (Dont. Even.) If a horse decides it wants to cuddle you, and yes, sometimes they do, you will most likely end up on your ass. Or hanging like a sloth from the horse's neck, the stall door, tack rack or whatever you managed to snatch before Scout there tried to knock you over. Horses are BIG, really big, heavy and strong. They do what we tell them only through the subtle manipulation of cues, treats, threats, cussing and sometimes tears.

This is good! This is plot fodder. If your hero is riding or living around a horse for any length of time, the odds are it will try to kill him at least once. Even nice horses spend their idle hours dreaming up ways to kill their favorite person...or themselves. They do that, too. If there is something deadly poisonous within reach your horse WILL eat it. A lot. 

They will also: bite you, step on you (and refuse to get off, and act shocked when you push on them) kick you, spit on you, roll on you (Sometimes while you're in the saddle--how about during that big getaway scene?) poop at the worst possible moments, stop for a five minute pee (again, during that getaway?) stumble, trip (on purpose, I swear to god) swerve at random moments, and jump off cliffs willingly if a bush looks at them wrong. 

A horse is an unpredictable element. And that is how it should be. Right? This is not a well trained circus gazelle. Horses fart, and waddle, and go into heat, and run away! Oh how they love to run away. If your hero doesn't tie that knot, just right....horse gone. Or better, horse tangled into a three point yoga pose with leadline twisted around each leg and its throat (even though its not long enough to do that) and choking itself while thrashing to be free. 

Horses. Done right, a plot goldmine. 

Me, Esquire

As some of you know, I'm a lawyer by day (and occasionally by night and weekend too when work gets busy). For the most part, I really enjoy it. I work primarily in the field of estates - trusts, wills, that sort of thing. I like it because I help people plan for their futures, for their families. And I like being there to help them through their grief, to tell them what to do when they are too upset to know.

But I find some of it astonishing... the people I meet are sometimes more outlandish than the characters I create in my books (and I write fantasy!). I guess, having grown up in a somewhat astonishingly functional family, that I didn't expect the level of dysfunction I see in so many clients.

The stories these people tell and the grudges they can bear... it's remarkable. I worked on a case a long time ago where two feuding siblings had bankrupted a multi-million dollar estate fighting over who got a set of silverware. Silverware.

I like it because the stories keep things interesting and give me faith that no matter what my subconscious dreams up, there are stranger things than are dreamt of in my philosphies.

But I also find the fiction version of the law astonishing. Not things like Legally Blonde (admittedly, a large part of why I went to law school) or Law and Order (if they actually obeyed most of the laws, it would be the most boring show on the planet). But I've read more than a few books that include tales of wills forcing marriage and other bizarre things to inherit.

And I love it! I don't begrudge the authors their literary free rein with the law. Goodness knows the reality can't compare. Some days its more than fiction, but most days its a lot less. But I love seeing the law used creatively in fiction.

So, if you have any legal stories or threads in your work in progress, let me know. If I have time, I'll try and help you out.

Skye