Muse on Strike

Apparently the best way to stop any writing progress whatsoever is to give myself a deadline. The Muse doesn't deal well with pressure. Oh sure, she's happy enough to play along when it's all just fun and games, but hit her with a deadline, with the possibility that this time the story is "for real," and she disappears faster than a Wii at Best Buy. (My stepdaughter really wants a Wii for Christmas. Ha.)

For a good three weeks I was cruising along, writing every day. Little freewriting exercises mostly, which sometimes ended up being not so little--over a thousand words a pop, often enough. Then the guilt started. You know, that little voice that whispers like the snake in Eden, ever so helpfully, "This is all well and good, but you haven't really finished any stories yet. Nothing to send out to market. How are you going to be a real writer if you don't send anything out? If you don't finish anything?" Those two words, "real writer," are the killer.

So, not wanting to be a poseur and a bit overconfident from the recent rush of progress, I put aside the writing exercises and set a deadline for finishing the Real Story. The one I was supposed to be working on. It wasn't even a tough deadline--a simple "finish the story before New Year's"-- but I've gone from averaging 700 words a night to averaging nil over the past week. A new approach is called for.

I thought it'd be interesting to look over the results of my freewriting exercises to see what I write about when the subconscious get full rein. So far I have:
1 murdered unicorn
1 pedophiliac school principal and 2 no-so-human little boys
1 whispering doll and 1 girl locked in attic
2 falling angels
1 Yeti
1 posse of dwarves
1 guardian lawn gnome, who I think might become a lawn flamingo in future drafts
2 mermaids out-of-water, in 2 different stories
1 time travel love story
1 possible alien invasion (with laser-beam eyes--woohoo!)
2 stories with no hint of SF anywhere (yet)
Lots of blood, death, and violence, especially murder
and
1 Muse who likes to play around with SF cliches

We're headed back East for a week during Christmas, during which time I will be negotiating work terms with the Muse. I hope we can reach some sort of accomodation.