Mentally I’m sitting here with the sound of an empty brain resounding in my ears. Wubbuda-wubbeda…

I haven’t had coffee yet, which may or may not help. I joke about it, but I can and do go without caffeine often enough. I haven’t on the other hand, had the momentum to do anything other than read yet this morning. Which might be part of the problem, I’m half-minded to stay in this other world and finish the story, rather than fully face this one, and all the work I’ve got to do this weekend. I’d rather read. But I will be good – and this blog is the beginning of that – and discipline myself into getting my work done.

As I’m reading through blogs this morning (what, you can’t read more than one thing at a time?) I was delighted at the continuation of Kate’s journey to RavenCon. She is in fine form and I’m tickled I gave up my day at Mad Genius Club so she could carry on with it. When I got to Twisted Writers and read about Amanda’s attempts to thwart her muse Myrtle, I had a chuckle and a minor revelation of my own.

My muse was, at that point in the morning, soundly asleep in the other room. I was arguing with the dog to let him sleep in. The dog is of the opinion that if most of the pack is up, the leader needs to be, as well. Now, I’m a morning person (I know, a shocking breach of stereotype in a writer) and he is a night owl. So he needed to be asleep. The dog pouted. I pondered musing. I’m very lucky, as a writer, to have my Evil Muse. I usually call him First Reader here on the blog, because when I was writing Pixie Noir I sent him snippets via email, about a thousand words at a time, and he read them and commented, and helped shape the book into what it is now. But he’s more often a muse, on a project. Not that he’s got so much input, but he’ll sit and talk to me, and we bounce ideas around, until suddenly I am scribbling ideas for a follow-on book to Children of Myth, a space opera trilogy, and…

Right now we’re operating on an unspoken agreement. He’ll not evil muse at me, and I’ll finish up with school. Then, two days after finals, we’ll spend about 6 hours in a car together, doing a nice long drive. After that, I fully expect to be writing like a madwoman for close to a month, until I have to taper off for wedding and convention prep. I’m rather looking forward to it. Also, it’s nice to have a rational, reasonable muse. One that I can say, look, I have finals, do you mind?

He does, but he’s a very patient man.

Cedar Sanderson
The First Reader and his Author