Writers are considered strange and odd by many "normal" people.When we are just thinking, we are thought to be moody,too quiet,and get asked repeatedly if there is something wrong.(Which of course, is no end of being helpful when trying to think!) And when we are excited over a project, and extremely talkative, it is so sweetly suggested that perhaps we should take a tranquilizer.When I am heavily into a work, loved ones tusk, tusk, and shake their heads and worry that I should slow down, and when I am relaxing...resting from my labors after tearing through twenty pages non-stop, those same tusk,tusking head shakers furrow their brows and sympathetically ask if I am "blocked!" Well, I for one, wish to heaven that those "normal" people would just get over it, and realize that I don't own my artistic nature, Au contraire, it has me.When I consider it at length, the whole thing comes back to a line I ran across in one of my favorite books when I was an early teen, from "The Prodigal Women"...the author's name escapes me for the moment,(Oh wait! It was Nancy Hale!) but in it, the lead heroine,Leda March, who considers herself awkward and unattractive, is trying to decide between following her love of literature, or a more "romantic" bent, and one of her instructors tells her, "...It's a fine life, the life of the mind." And compares books to lovers, who will, leave you, lie to you, and betray you, and not care if they hurt you, but books never will. (to paraphrase here) But read a book, and put it down and come back ten years later, and it will say the same thing it said before.Shortly thereafter, I began to write.And that quote has always stood out in my memory as being a defining moment for me,because it is true. I have never felt like Leda....well, not for very long, anyway, but she, unlike myself, totally turned her back on her writing career, and went seeking after love and the "great romance" that have been the undoing for so many.I have loved, and been loved many times throughout my life, but I can honestly say, it has not been the focal point of my life.Courting the muse, as they say, has been. Certainly it has it's ups and downs. You can go along for days or even weeks and never hit a break in the flow of ideas and inspirations, and then all at once, you might hit a snag, where something doesn't quite fit, and you might mumble around for a while, but then, all of a sudden, in the middle of dinner, it jells for you, and you drop your fork, and run into the other room,declaring, excuse me! But I have a scathingly brilliant idea! And Oh! The thrill of that moment, and of that time after when you are like a madwoman,fingers flying as fast as they can to keep up with your thoughts,as point after point of your creation comes together before your very eyes! There is nothing that can take the place of the soaring emotions of writing something that makes you laugh out loud, or cry hot tears,and that wrings that emotion from all who read it! That feeling is better than food, better than sex,and second only to breathing sweet air on a higher plateau than you have ever attained before in your life! Frankly, if your stirring scenes don't bring you to that sort of exaltation, then you may as well, throw it in the fire and start again, because if it doesn't move you, it isn't going to move anyone else!
Oh,yeah, I am a victim of the fickle muse. Ain't it awful?
OUI?
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