Writing About Creativity

I wanted to start today’s post starts with a snippet from Sacrifices / Into Dust Descend, but nothing I wrote last night or this morning was simple enough for me to extract.

I believe that’s good. The days speed past faster than I want. My deadline seems so much nearer than I expected when I set this “novel in 90” into motion, but it’s energized my muse. Which is what’s supposed to happen whenever you feed them. Ideas come out of the left field for the oddest reasons because your brain is working overtime making connections it normally skips past in day-to-day life. You’re no longer running on autopilot.

Today’s case in point involves one of my coworkers. She stocks our drink supply cabinet now that our office moved to its new location and doesn’t host a pop vending machine any longer. We work on an honor system, taking drinks from a fridge, a quarter for water or pop, 50¢ for flavored waters and teas. Every few days my coworker unloads a cart stacked with fresh supplies.

I joked with her that we should give her the nickname Bev, which bears no resemblance to her real name. Bev as in Beverage–and my muse/brain immediately jumped from that to how I could use this in fiction. Specifically, I thought Bev was a perfect name for a vampire to give a humans on which it feeds.

I can’t use it just yet, and it’s possible someone else will think of a similar connection (or already did). Muses seem to talk with each other, passing gossip back and forth along with idea. I like the idea, though, and I’ve filed it away for future reference. Even if I see it somewhere else in the future, the idea made me laugh this morning, and I know it’s a decent one.

So, my deadline doesn’t worry me. Creativity wins the day. Will continue winning. I produced two decent pages during lunch, and the words twist and turn, and lead back to other days and other words, illuminating this world that only exists as bytes for the moment.

One change I made was to expand the third chapter beyond its original length, using the new material to bring the viewpoint back to the original character who starts off the chapter. It eliminates a flashback that could have shown up in a later chapter, and lets the next chapter start at a logical point. It’s now 3,000 words in length, and the work I’ll put into the start of the fourth chapter should take me to 10,000 words before the day ends.