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reileenWhen you're writing your first draft of something, you don't have your muse yet. Instead, you're simultaneously waiting and looking for her* in this...well, let's say wilderness, although in retrospect a labyrinth would work just as well. Or even the streets of Tokyo. Anyway, so you're waiting for and looking for your silly little muse, alternating between sitting on your ass and peeking under every stone and pumpkin for a sign of this elusive, capricious creature.
And then, when you find her, BAM! You're chasing her through the jagged mountain passes and impossibly thick thickets of trees and the poison-infested swampholes and maybe even the crazy famine-stricken cannibalistic settlements of your story. You're swearing up a typhoon and stumbling like you've never stumbled before, but no matter what, you know that you have to keep going, because if you lose her the Gods only know when you'll find her next. And the scenes that you spazflail wildly through in your attempt to catch your muse are the scenes that make up the first draft of whatever you're writing. And that draft is done when you finally catch your muse, sweating ten Niagara Falls and gasping for O2 and realizing that you might've pissed your panties back there. That, my friend, is the time when you make your muse do your bidding: you make her clean you up, and then you make her lead you back through the scenes you've passed - but slowly and surely this time, like a tour, having her point out the things you might've missed in your haste and desperation.
-Reileen
one way or another, I'm gonna find ya
*Female pronoun used for ease of whatever.
And then, when you find her, BAM! You're chasing her through the jagged mountain passes and impossibly thick thickets of trees and the poison-infested swampholes and maybe even the crazy famine-stricken cannibalistic settlements of your story. You're swearing up a typhoon and stumbling like you've never stumbled before, but no matter what, you know that you have to keep going, because if you lose her the Gods only know when you'll find her next. And the scenes that you spazflail wildly through in your attempt to catch your muse are the scenes that make up the first draft of whatever you're writing. And that draft is done when you finally catch your muse, sweating ten Niagara Falls and gasping for O2 and realizing that you might've pissed your panties back there. That, my friend, is the time when you make your muse do your bidding: you make her clean you up, and then you make her lead you back through the scenes you've passed - but slowly and surely this time, like a tour, having her point out the things you might've missed in your haste and desperation.
-Reileen
one way or another, I'm gonna find ya
*Female pronoun used for ease of whatever.