Dear Me (Take Three)

Dear Me,

Since my Muse has been AWOL beginning in early October 2008, I'm going to offer up this opportunity for him to graciously deign to make an appearance, if His Majesty finds it reasonable to do so.  In fact, I will even get down on my knees (okay...there!  Happy??) in order to reintroduce His Most Superior and Wondrous Excellency to the world he seems to find beneath his notice or participation.  (You hear me??  I'm on my knees for you, bastard.)

Oh, I see.  Still too busy to answer me, eh?  Well, fine.  (Gets off her knees.)  I'll just write this damn thing without you.  Who needs a snide little shoulder-ornament, anyway?  All you do is keep me awake at night and make my family hate me.

(And yes, I know he can read my thoughts, but since he's been off skipping between rainbows while I'm grinding out computerloads of crap, I don't really care anymore.) 

So where should I begin?  I guess I should start with this:  I had big plans for 2008.  Big plans that I ALMOST managed to reach.  Then, starting mid-October, my Muse--let's call him Sleepsalot--decides he's going to ditch me in the middle of three different novels and amidst plans for a fourth.  No amount of pleading or cajoling would bring the little bugger back, either.  He was gone, and had left me completely to my own devices for three months.

I tried to coax him back, too.  I tried writing the crummy little yarns that he loves to write--fantasy and adventure.  No banana.  I read urban fantasy until I wanted to vomit.  He laughed on the sidelines and dueled leprechauns for their gold.  I watched movies.  He got the popcorn.  I tried hypnosis.  He scared off the doctor with some eerie gutteral language I still haven't identified.  I burned candles.  The black ones.  My Muse told me he preferred chanting and blood sacrifice.

In essence, the last three months have been an endless, pleading search for my Muse to come back.  He laughed in my general direction and took up skateboarding.

Vile little toad.

So this year's Dear Me contest has inspired me to try a different approach.  Instead of pleading and cajoling, begging and scraping, offering him every pleasure and extravagance his bloated little soul desires, I'm going to come out and tell him what I REALLY think.  And, damn it, I'm going to get this done without him.

My goals for 2009:

1)  Find a NEW Muse.  One that won't abandon me when I need him most.  One that will speak to me when I'm feeling glum.  One that will pat me on the back when I need encouragement.  One that will hold my hand and stick with me through thick and thin.  One that won't have psychotic bouts of mania followed by long months of severe cognitive dysfunction.

2)  Give this NEW Muse the go-ahead to drag me through any twisted, rollercoaster story her little heart desires.  (That's right.  HER heart.  I'm going to go for a GIRL this time.  Maybe a GIRL won't be such an arrogant, moody little twit.)

3)  Coax this NEW Muse to finish the three heaping piles of bat guano that the OLD Muse vomited up.  The NEW Muse will have what it takes to finally write that scene in Outer Bounds...you know the one I'm talking about.  The one that the OLD Muse didn't have what it took to finish properly.  The one that the OLD Muse couldn't hack out after six attempts and a month of trying.  After that kind of track record, it's no wonder he ran off.

4)  Get my NEW Muse to help me with forty new stories.  This is a short-story year.  Last year, the novel year, the OLD Muse obviously couldn't hack it.  Now I've gotta get the NEW Muse to clean up his mess AND do her job.  I'll bet she'll even have time to spare.

5)  Relax and let my NEW Muse write a thriller.  She, unlike the OLD Muse, will be able to write something that isn't corny and predictable.

6)  Laugh and giggle my way through Millennium Potion 2 as my NEW Muse does what the OLD Muse wasn't able to do--write a sequel.

And that, my friends, would be quite enough for my OLD Muse.  However, my NEW Muse will not only be smarter and more productive, but she will also be a businesswoman.  That means:

7)  She will get those anthology and contest stories submitted ON TIME, while producing top quality work.

8)  She will make rewrites as requested, instead of putting them off 'Until She Feels Better."

9)  She'll finally get off her butt and win that Writers of the Future contest.  Only one more pro sale and we're disqualified. 

And oh yes, here's the kicker:

10)  My NEW Muse will have 50,000 fans panting to read her every word by the end of 2009.

Signed,

Me, Myself, and I.



Old Muse's Addendum:  Unless you're planning on bathing more regularly, make sure she wears perfume.  Gets pretty awful up there on the shoulder, that close to the armpit. 

Old Muse's Addendum II:  And if you're kind, you'll tell her to bring earplugs and those little ice-grippers for her feet.  You tend to jump around and make sounds like a startled monkey when you're excited.  I spent the first year and a half trying not to get thrown off while you screamed and hooted like you'd just taken a bad fall down the family tree.

Old Muse's Addendum III:  I find it offensive to be called a toad, especially by an unwashed sapien ink pustule.  I would have thought three months on strike for that last "exploding canker sore" comment would have given you a clue, but apparently your tiny brain has about as much learning capacity as a flattened fungi.  Just for that, you'll be writing about carbunckles for the next year.  Peace Out.

-Sara King
http://www.kingfiction.com/blog