Adventures in the Land of Inspiration or Arguing with My Muse

Starring: Hava Goff and Gabriel the gibbon

Rewind

“A short story,” she said, her voice quick and sure. Decisive, if you will. She may as well have asked me to write a kick-ass horror novel. That’s right, a whole novel. Because short stories are no small potatoes, and kick-ass books about deranged killers or haunted houses with italicized flashback interludes are almost on par with the impossibility of short stories. Whose idea was it to compact a plot line when it could, and most definitely should be expanded upon?

Dictionary. defines a short story as “a piece of prose fiction usually under 10,000 words.” If we take a literal approach that means I would have to come up with a story, plot it out, and then figure a way to explain it all poignantly in 9,999 words. Impossible. Anastasia would just have to suffer with disappointment. So I mustered up the most withering look I possessed (somewhat formidable if I do say so) and unleashed it upon my friend.

“I don’t write short stories,” I said, “I was kind of just being polite when I threw that in. How about a poem?”

Yes, I would even take poetry over short stories. Short stories! The bane of my existence. How can an idea be so compressed? How can the characters be left unexplored? How can the essence of romance, hate, longing, or mystery be properly conveyed in only 9,999 words?! It just isn’t possible. I stand by that. I will stand by that forever.

Anastasia scrunched her nose in a familiar expression. It was the one that said she was disappointed but didn’t want to be rude. She wanted a short story. Damnit. I could tell so easily by that look that she wanted to know what my writing skills could do when challenged. What exactly would happen if I was forced to stay within a word limit? What’s more, I only have five days to do it. Five days to be inspired, to contact my muse, and to convince him to help me out. He can be a stubborn little beast, always prancing about with ideas but never sharing them.

Anyway, the guilt started to seep through my thick head. It was her birthday, after all. It was about her, not me, or my epic skepticism when it came to prose. So I relinquished my hold on our mental tug-of-war, and with a sigh, agreed.

Pause

But none of that really happened. I agreed from the start, with optimism, thinking ‘This won’t be so bad.’ Deluding myself into thinking that I wouldn’t fail at something that, to be honest, I’d never even tried before. I accepted the challenge with a hopeful outlook, the naïve standpoint of one who can’t look into the realistic future, only the one she imagines.

So, basically I screwed myself over.

Play

I sit at my laptop, four days into my time limit, with a heaping pile of nothing. Six paragraphs sit before, gleaming in all their well-worded glory, and I am stumped. I’ve run dry on eloquence and ideas, and a general plot line. I’m failing, quite badly. On the one hand, I could continue with what I have, fight through the awfulness until something good appears. On the other hand, I could start completely over and hope that something really great hops into my head. Option A) sounds better, but Option B) sounds like what I’m going to do.

With uncertainty, I press the control button and the A key, highlighting the entire document. I close my eyes and hit backspace. No turning back now. I sigh, and stare some more at the plain white page, envisioning words typing themselves, sentence after sentence of some eye-catching, impossible to ignore story. Except, no wording comes. My gibbon of a muse is back, holding shining, brilliant ideas behind his back and begging me to guess which hand holds which – the devil. I curl my lip and wrinkle my nose. I don’t want to play his guessing games or try and follow the cup, I just want an idea and now.

My muse juggles the ideas in front of him, his nimble black fingers never missing a beat. I glimpse the thoughts that could be mine, if only I could gather the stamina to catch one:

A faery boy with cellophane blue skin, spreading his fingers over a silk blanket, stubs of wings on his back. He’s clearly the victim of some misfortune, an outcast perhaps, in need of some mortal’s help. Romance rings in the air of his story, the predictable element of his world. Close behind his story is one of a girl who controls people’s thoughts, swiftly replaced by one of a hapless teen who finds a homeless boy caught by werewolves. My gibbon spins the orb-like ideas on his palms, shifting them inside their spheres until they’re only a blur of colors.

I catch sight of one that sounds promising. A small piece with a mythical feel, about the creation of the Earth. The gods, the creatures, all at my disposal. Passed reading on The Bible, Norse, and Greek mythology sparks at my fingertips, waiting for me to call upon the inspiration and create something new, a meshing of the myths I know by heart. Yet again, a re-write comes to mind. A portion of a Shakespeare play that I can recite beckons to be modernized and made anew. Words even form in my head at the familiar voice this tale has.

“I should have expected to see you here.”

“Don’t worry, Oberon. We were just leaving.”

But like the rest, the gibbon just tosses them along, wiping the wording from my mind. I am growing tired of this game.

Rewind

I can’t remember when exactly my muse took the shape of a gibbon, only that it was after I found a quiz online that supposedly determined what daemon you were meant to have. Before, I often imagined my muse as a deer, sometimes a fox, but his shape changed all the time. Now, he’s mostly a gibbon, silvery in color with a definite mischievous streak. I named him Gabriel, but unlike the archangel, he doesn’t really protect me, he tricks me, and taunts me, and then laughs as I fail and fall on my face.

Gabriel and I have never gotten along. I have to wonder how many other people picture their muses so thoroughly, and whether or not they argue and fight with them as often as I do with mine. It takes a massive amount of imagination to personalize something as strange as inspiration, and an even larger amount of self-control to remember that it isn’t real. I imagine all sorts of things. I used to look at clouds when I was younger and make up stories about them, like they were souls of the dead on their way to the afterlife. I named the ladybugs and the bees. I imagined what it would be like to live as a dog.

I believed in dragons and faeries, I would imagine them flying passed the windows, twisting up street lamps and crawling their way through the forests on my way home from school. When boredom calls I yell back with the most vivid image I can think up and follow it as it drifts around my home, my yard, even in town as I walk, I picture things the world has long forgotten. I bring back magic, if only for myself, if only for a little while. People often ask me what I’m thinking about, because I have a permanent look of dreaming on my face. I never tell the full truth, just as I refuse to take the world at face value. If I want there to be a werewolf glaring through the woods, or a sprite peeking out from a woman’s purse, then there will be.

My mother says I was a very intense child. Well, I’m still intense, I just learned to hide it. People don’t appreciate imagination. It’s perceived as weakness, or madness. Well, I am mad. So be it.

Interlude

“Anastasia?” He spoke softly, just above a whisper. His eyes swept over mine, obsidian without a pupil, surrounded by the whitest of eyelids where the blue tint in his skin wore thin and disappeared. The same white showed over his knuckles as he tightened them around the covers, and faintly across his cheekbones when he turned his head. I made no response to his summons, keeping myself in a faux sleep state. He was nicer when he was alone, and I wanted to burn the image of him, quiet and a little vulnerable into my mind for as long as possible.

Ioannes slid from the bed carefully, as if he knew I was watching, and into an old pair of jeans – my brother’s. I’d taken them a few days after the divorce was finalized and he and my father moved away. I wanted something to remember him by. A pair of jeans and one of his old band T-shirts. I’m glad I did, because otherwise my pretty faery friend would look like a tall and underdeveloped girl. Fighting to ignore an itch on my thigh, I watched as Ioannes lifted the T-shirt from the floor, considered it idly and dropped it again on the bed, curling his slender fingers into a loose fist as the shirt puddled into a dark stain on the comforter.

My life seemed to happen in threes. Three days ago, the thin faery had stumbled through my bedroom door, shivering with cold, his glamour stripped and broken, and babbling about protection. Three years ago, I met my best friend, Lyrikos. She too, came through my bedroom window on a cold night when the air was dry before the snow. She simply appeared, whispering my name in the dark. I’d started awake, thinking it was dream, and the sight of a pink skinned, six-fingered girl perched on my windowsill was enough to reinforce that theory. Lyrikos told me what I really was, a human with the ability to understand the Folk. The Confrere. I was their safe haven, a place where no other fey could touch them.
Delete.

The company was met by moonlight. Six gathered in a forest grove, called together by the low hum of a full moon. Tonight it was pale ivory, casting a silvery light upon the trees and their visitors. There hadn’t been a meeting such as this is nearly seven hundred years. The three men entered the grove first, young in looks but much older then even they themselves realized. A dark-haired fifteen-year-old sat on a chair made of twisted ferns. Ankle on his knee, chin in hand, and a bored, impatient look in his vibrant green eyes. The second, a tall, pale-skinned man, aged eighteen, stood aloof. His white blonde hair combed back, he kept his inky black gaze fixed upon the third man.

Sandy-haired and hazel-eyed, the last of the three was almost seventeen. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, facing away from his companions. A quiet, thoughtfulness seemed to surround him as he kept a solemn gaze upon the bracken.

“Summer is late.” He said, breaking the silence of the wood. He never moved but at his voice the blonde twitched, coming out of his reverie.

“Summer was weak this year,” was the reply. “I don’t expect things to improve.”

A flicker of uncertainty permeated the third man’s stare. His companion’s words were troubling. Already he could feel the flicker of light within, his life’s magic waning thin. If the blonde’s words rang true it would be a difficult year indeed. In the lull that followed, each of the three seemed to weigh the option and the statistics. The black-haired boy shifted his weight to the other hand. Though his companions never moved, the same careful consideration hung in the air about them all.

“Summer won’t be coming,” The black-haired boy said at last. Silence followed, broken only by the scuttle of a wood mouse as it stepped into the grove, froze at the sight of the sandy-haired seventeen-year-old, and turned tail. No animal would set foot there while the men stayed company. The black-haired boy waited until its fearful scrabbles were gone before continuing.
Delete.

It began with the clay. Made from hair and blood of the supreme god Eliopius and his wife Shahira. The clay was rolled into a ball before the six Holy Ones took it in turns to pound the ball until it was mutated beyond recognition. Eliopius placed the ball close to Apollo, for it was his job to keep this new world’s life healthy. The supreme God gently tapped the world and it began to spin, suspended in the universe.
DELETE!

Play

I send a vehement glare at Gabriel. He drops the ideas with a grin, sending them scattering across the floor in a million shattered, glass pieces. I drop my head into my hands and stare at the shards of inspiration. There’s no hope for getting it back now. I straighten up, look at the computer screen, and follow Gabriel’s instructions to type what I think. My fingers move, slowly at first, but with certainty:

“I was sitting on my bed, laptop in hand, with a thousand shimmering ideas congregating just beyond my reach. I knew that any one of them could yield secrets to my next big undertaking, a story so wonderful I would have to finish it. They were there, those sparkling, beautiful, and mysterious ideas.

And they were taunting me.

Every one of those sparkling orb-like beings was laughing at my complete inability to capture them. But I knew, like all ideas, they would come back eventually. They were of my own making of course but not fully formed. But ideas are fickle things, they want to be written but not caught, and they are constantly testing their wording.

But, I knew, yes I was quite certain that all of those ideas would eventually itch to have their own folders that they would have to return to me. And then, yes then, I would get somewhere and would once again master the words.

All I had to do was wait.”

Well, that’s all well and good, but I don’t want to wait. I have one day, only one to come up with a spectacular, Anastasia-worthy short story. I turn and let loose a string of random, rather insulting swear words, completely chewing out my muse and his lack of helpfulness.

“Couldn’t you give me something more relevant?” I demand, giving him the withering look I should’ve pulled out four days ago. Gabriel returns it with just as much vigor and crosses his ape arms over his chest, sitting down defiantly in front of the sparkling bits of idea still on the floor. We face-off for a few moments, his small black eyes eating into my green ones, but I do my best to fight back. With a slow sigh, Gabriel unfolds his arms and starts to genially clean up his mess. I roll my eyes. Cleaning isn’t going to inspire me. The cleaning could be done after the short story. I grumble to myself and turn back to the computer, willing the words to form.

Nothing happens. Nothing ever happens.

Pause

Inspiration often hits at the oddest, most inexplicable times. A line of Goth poetry will spark to life in my head as I watch a Boy Meets World re-run. The plot line to a fantasy novel begins to weave through my mental index while some inane Cobra Starship riff plays in the background. It’s amazing how little things, smells, images, latent memories; anything can cause a spurt of inspiration. Yet I never seem to be able to call on it when I need to. I always sit with a half finished chapter begging to be written and I’m failing it by lacking the energy to chase Gabriel around and force something out of him.

Yet I’m always accused of spacing out because car rides and walks seem to bring forth the largest bouts of inspiration. I’ve also found that certain music can inspire certain stories. For instance, when I feel like working on the epic fantasy (which I’ve put off for four months) I plug into AFI, Matchbox Romance, and anything classic rock. One teeny bob fantasy requires The Academy Is… and Motion City Soundtrack while another can only develop under the influence of Balligomingo and lots and lots of Amy Brown.

I’ve started over 35 works of original fiction, and not once did I neglect to pick a theme song for each one. Nor did I ever write a word without somebody echoing between my ears. Music is my life, as much as any story, and certainly more so than breathing ever has been.

Interlude

The club was small and smoky. It was almost three miles away from my house and Trillium picked me up at the end of the road, so my parents wouldn’t see, in an old green VW bus. It was lime colored but faded and there was a big peace sign sticker on the passenger side door. I couldn’t help but grin when I saw it.
Delete.

Megan thinks I should write a memoir or something. My grandchildren with love it, she says. But I’m thinking what about my children? Shouldn’t I have those first? Or maybe my grandchildren will be the only ones who love whatever this turns out to be. Not that it matters anyway because I am never having kids, because I am never falling in love. But I’m writing this down anyway to humor Megan because Megan will keep telling me I should until I do. Or until she dies. That’s just the way that girl works.
Delete.

He was heavy. And when we hit ground I could feel my back scrape against the cement. I think my uniform ripped. When I think back on it I kind of wish he would’ve done like they do in the movies and twisted as we fell so that he hit the ground instead. But that was selfish. He saved my life so what was I complaining for?

I was just spacing out, heading across the street for the crepe shoppe. If I had to spend my last bit of money, it may as well be on something sweet. I didn’t even see the car coming, I do remember watching that boy come running toward me, looking scared. The next thing I knew I was laying on the hard ground staring into a pair of intense blue eyes.
DELETE!

Play

I’m starting to wonder if I could break the delete button. The poor thing gets more attention than any other key on my laptop. In fact I find myself wailing on it even after the document has disappeared, returned to its evil, taunting blankness. I start to hate Microsoft Word. I lean my head forward, smacking it into the hard wood of my desk. One day. I can’t do this in one day. I groan in exasperation.

A small, furry hand nudges my cheek and I roll my head slightly to meet my muse’s dark gaze. I don’t even have the energy to muster a glower as I look at him. Gabriel chirps slightly and holds out one black hand, something glistening within his loose grasp. I sit up straighter, curiosity penetrating my irritation. I look carefully into the gibbon’s palm. A patched together, modest idea sits there, glowing with hope and half-formed plans. I quirk an eyebrow and feel the soft brush of inspiration in my blood. My muse has relented. An idea has been born.

I can’t help but grin and I pluck the idea from Gabriel’s grasp and perch it against my laptop. Rejuvenated with this new sense of purpose, I put my fingers to the keys once more…

Fast-Forward

Grinning ear to ear, I slapped down the five pages of brilliance onto the counter of the book shop, filled with pride at the amazing short story I’d composed in only a matter of hours.

“There,” I declared happily. “Happy Birthday.”

Anastasia smiled back at me, pleased to see I’d complied with her wishes. For once I’d actually done the thing I committed to. I was no longer a failure, and Anastasia was going to love those five pages. She picked them up as if they were silver-plated and riffled them quickly.

“What’s it about?” she asked, like someone given a wrapped box who demands to know what’s inside. Open it, fool. Before I even came up with an answer, she started reading the first sentence, such is the nature of my brilliance. It hooks you in, you can’t ignore it. My grin widening, I said, “Read it and find out.”

Stop

But that didn’t really happen.

And I don’t know if this counts as prose.

But at least it’s less than 10,000 words.

The End.

…for now…