My Muse: The Crack Addict

It’s been a hectic couple of days. I’ve been away from home, but with very good intentions of writing.

My muse has been firing away at me to get this latest play down, so I made sure that I took my laptop with me and informed the people that I was staying with that I would be writing whenever the desire took me. (Writers can be a very antisocial breed at times – but you have to write when the mood arrives, as you can never force yourself to write creatively.)

Unfortunately, it would appear my muse forgot to pack her suitcase. Every time I forced myself down behind the laptop (in a rather odd location, it has to be said) I would type about half a page, read it… and delete the lot!

Nothing I was putting down was any good – it reminded me of scenes from On The Busses, and look how dated that looks now!

But I kept at it, much to the annoyance of my hosts… But I made the mistake of setting myself a goal of writing at least five minutes dialogue a day. That way, I told myself, I could finish a play in 21 days! I’ve always been goal driven, so I was almost compulsive about achieving this self-inflicted goal. Even worse, I was convincing myself that I was in negative equity with the play while I was away.

My mood sank (I really must post something to my hosts to say sorry). I started to feel like I would never get this play finished.

When I eventually got home, I faced the PC and it was taunting me. I ended up doing everything I could to avoid going anywhere near it (or at least, when I did get on it, I didn’t do anything constructive).

Somehow, I forced myself to sit behind the PC tonight. I didn’t think that anything would come of it…

BANG! 8 minutes of dialogue on the screen in 75 minutes!

Stunned? I was crapping myself! I was actually trembling at the end of the session.

Something has to be wrong! I read the dialogue again, and there was the shiver again! I couldn’t find anything that I wanted to change.

While I have never taken ‘controlled substances’, I’m fairly sure that the rush I was having would have had a pretty good street value.

Then I got it… My muse is a crack addict! When I was away, she couldn’t find her regular dealer… Come home and she’s high as a kite…

Next time I go away, I better make sure she knows where to get a fix!