The Muse is a Lie

I was watching Tiny Desk Concerts last week, and I saw Taylor Swift's. Tay-Tay is also shaming me for my laziness. The Internet has made much of her putting out TWO albums since the start of the pandemic, while I have this decade-old unfinished manuscript that is creeping asymptotically toward finished. She said that sometimes music just comes to her with no effort, like the song "All Too Well" did in the middle of the night, and other times, the inspiration isn't there, "and that's where the craft comes in."

Johnny Rzeznik said that composing is 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration. You roll tape and keep noodling around until something good comes out.

Stephanie Pearl-McFee said that she sits down and doesn't get up until she has met her word count for the session.

My heroine Dorothy Parker said that "writing is the art of apply the butt to the chair." She is my spirit animal is so many ways, not least because she never managed to finish a novel.

Yes. The consensus is that you sit and you stare and you poke out words (or chords) until there is something there. 

My first book was too easy to write. :-(

Why Can't I Finish This Damn Book?

 NaNoWriMo reminded me that I started my vampire book in 2011. 

Holy shit. 2011? 

And why, nine years later, haven't I finished it?

Because I don't love it? Because I don't quite know how? Because there is no point?

I think about plots for stories a lot. Like a lot. I think of stories I would like to read, and following the brilliant advice of my friend James, I am not a unique and special snowflake, and if I want to read something, there must be other people who want to read that thing, too. So I should just get off my ass and write it, right?

I bought a new MacBook with the scissor action keyboard, so no more annoying double letters and accidental periods and capitalizations, and it's GOLD for fuck's sake, so I should just write, right?

Right.

Fits and Starts

The first 15% of a creative project, any project, is exhilarating. The next 65% can be solidly satisfying. The final 20%...sucks. With knitting, I call it the "This Damn Sweater Stage," when I stop knitting to measure the piece over and over again, as if remeasuring will magically make the infernal thing as long as it needs to be.

This should be a year for finishing things, including the dozens of incomplete knitting projects carefully packed in plastic boxes and at least some part of the three unfinished novels and four short stories that are carefully saved in folders and backed up in the cloud.