Fellow Go Figure Reads writer, Stanley McFarland is working on a
project about hell. He writes on a blog a few times a year, and it’s
usually something long, churchy, and egg-heady. It’s pretty boring
stuff, but feel free to check it out. boring blog
Anyway, Stanley says he’s reworking the concept of hell, and he
asked me what I think of it. I wanted to say that hell was reading
long, churchy, egg-heady blog posts about stuff I don’t understand,
but seeing as he writes for Go Figure Reads, I decided I should be
more helpful.
So here are the top ten ways that I see hell.
1) An eternal presidential campaign.
1a) A campaign where the two major candidates are the worst people I
can think of. Wait! Are we in hell already?
2) Gnats.
3) Endless root canal session with about 50 trillion requests of,
“just a little wider, please,” from my polite demonic dentist.
4) Celine Dion tribute on steel guitars.
5) Being next in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles while the
person at the window refuses to leave until he can vent his complaint
one more time…
6a) I pay to go to France with friends and find I’m the only one in
my group that doesn’t speak French…
6b) And doesn’t understand art…
6c) And doesn’t like wine…
6d) And is allergic to stinky cheese.
7) All Award Shows, All the Time!
8) Lima bean Pop Tarts.
9a) To have that dream again where I’m back in school and I’m not
wearing pants
9b) And find out it’s not a dream.
10) Any given day in Caitlyn Jenner’s life.
Then again, some animated characters don't seem to mind hell.
The question most writers dread is the one they are asked the most
often. “Where do you get your ideas?”
Now I haven’t been asked that question yet, but I’m hoping that
someday I will be famous enough that someone will. When that day
comes, I WILL HAVE AN ANSWER!!
I get them in the shower. It’s usually when the water is hottest,
and steam fills the bathroom. In other words it’s when a computer
or tape recorder would corrode, paper would wilt and when ink would
run.
I get them when the lights are out and I’m so close to asleep that
I’m not sure if I’m even awake. It’s when my legs are half
under the covers and half walking a woodsy trail I walked when I was
a child. In other words, it’s when I can’t possibly get up and
fire up the desk top.
I get them when I’m walking, far from home and only when I have no
mobile device, pen or paper. It’s when a mockingbird or noisy
brook is telling me a story with the kind of magic that will break if
I breathe too hard. In other words, it’s when I am absolutely
certain that I can take nothing from my experience but memories.
It’s also usually raining.
So when I’m in the shower, or about to fall asleep, or walking by a
brook, I do my best to remember the brilliant idea.
And I usually forget most of it.
Muses, being frisky sorts, love giving writers – or at least
wannabe writers, glimpses and teases, without any possibility to them
getting the entire picture down in print.
Or maybe they just want us to be clean, well rested, and properly
exercised (but not exorcised.)
No – I think they’re just frisky.
Muses are allergic to the practical. Muses want to haunt the writer,
not give dictation. They want you to forget your dentist appointment
on Tuesday, and that you need to make a deposit in your checking
account by 3PM to prevent the check you wrote to the Mystic Order of
Arachnid Vigilance (my favorite civic organization,)
from bouncing.
They want your entire attention, all the time; because if you stop
listening, that’s the moment they’ll whisper their best stuff –
too low to hear.
So now you know why writers step out in traffic, zone out at dinner
parties, and wear outfits that were obviously chosen at random.
We’re paying attention to another world, a world of ideas populated
by practical jokesters. Our laptops are crammed with thousands of
files – most of them shorter than a paragraph or two, waiting for
the moment with the muse will relent and give the rest of the story.
But that rarely happens. Usually the rest of the story is
constructed by the badly abused and poorly dressed writer, building
his superstructure of paper-mache onto the muse’s tiny foundation
of gold.
And it usually sucks, and gets relegated to the “needs work” file
which always far exceeds the “ready to publish” file.
And you hear the muse giggle.
Some day a sixteen-year-old at a dinner in one of those rare moments
when I’m paying attention will say to me, “I’d want to be a
writer, but I’d love to know where you get your ideas.”
“Would you; would your really?” I’ll ask.
And I’ll giggle in conjunction with a chorus of muses dancing
around my head and braiding my nose hairs.
Misery loves company, so they say.
And sometimes, as in the movie, Stranger than Fiction, the muses really mess us up.
