Plotting the Death of My Muse

Bet you never thought you'd catch a writer saying that, did you?

So here’s the deal. For the last several days I have been experiencing a wonderful influx of ideas and thoughts about a particular story I’m working on, and in all honesty I'm loving it. But it does come with consequences. For instance I can't sleep. My muse won’t leave me along long enough. The minute I put my head down on the pillow and let my mind relax another stream of dialog or conflict with fill up my brain and ferment there until my cork is about to pop from all of the pressure and I get back up and empty those thought onto paper, or my mini-computer. As I'm doing this, my muse is keeping up with the outflow by providing additional inflow. If I'm lucky I will get to turn off my computer fifteen minutes later and put my now very tired head back on that blasted pillow just so, you guessed it; the process can start all over again.

Eventually I will pass out from sheer exhaustion but even then I'm not left alone. The story enters my dreams in very bizarre ways until my subconscious can no longer take deviation from normal dream reality and wakes me up. The problem is I remember that stupid dream and it triggers another explosion of information. Lather, rinse, and repeat the same dilemma as above.

Though I will not post this until morning because this computer I'm writing from in bed (trying to shield the monitor light from my sleeping husband) doesn't have wireless, the clock in my bedroom now reads 3:29 am. I've been up since 1:30, when the muse woke me up again, trying to force it to shut up. As you can tell it's not working too well. I finally got it to give the story a rest only to find myself plotting out this blog.

Dang.


I've tried counting sheep, but after just a few the little buggers start coming over the fence with key words from my story branded across their fuzzy foreheads. I tried killing them once. Literally. I let my imagination go and gleefully plotted sleep sheep slaughter (only legal in fifteen states), only to find my muse piping up again. "Oh that's wonderful imagery! It would fit nicely right......" You'd think it was a proud grandparent pinning my finest work of art on their wall.

Maybe I should start counting trolls instead. They could leap over that proverbial fence wielding huge clubs with which to bop my muse on the head with when it tries to go wild again. Wait..... if I shifted that scene, a troll would add a great plot twist between..... and it’s off an running again.

I swear the thing is worse than a four year old who has managed to shed all of his clothes and is now running gleefully down the middle of the road shouting, “Look at me, look at me! I'm nakee!” Well okay, maybe it's not that bad, but now I can't get the nakee thing out of my head either.

So, though it may seem weird to comprehend I am beginning to plot the death of my muse. I am determined to gag the little sucker at the very least, but right now I’m seriously leaning toward a weighted pine coffin and the middle of the ocean. If not, this story is going to take very weird turn as my sanity completely leaves me.

“Give it up all ready!” My tired brain is screaming, “I need a decent night's sleep!”

But my muse just shrugs and sends another onslaught of scenes.

Darn muse.