Accommodating My Muse

“Within a hundred yards Valeria was panting and reeling in her gait, and behind them the crashing gave way to a rolling thunder as the monster broke out of the thickets and into the more open ground.  Conan’s iron arm about the woman’s waist half lifted her; her feet scarcely touched the earth as she was borne along at a speed she could never have attained herself.  If he could keep out of the beast’s way for a bit, perhaps that betraying wind would shift — but the wind held, and a quick glance over his shoulder showed Conan that the monster was almost upon them, coming like a war-galley in front of a hurricane.  He thrust Valeria from him with a force that sent her reeling a dozen feet to fall in a crumbled heap at the foot of the nearest tree, and the Cimmerian wheeled in the path of the thundering titan.”
(excerpt from Red Nails, by Robert E. Howard)


Accommodating My Muse
One thing I've discovered about my Muse is that sometimes she can be unpredictable, fickle, and erratic.  She loves to focus on stories that are unrelated to what I think I should be working on.  If I need to write a serious scene, she resists by giving me light-hearted, playful visions.  Conversely, her tones can be dark and ominous when I need her to help me write an uplifting, joyful scene.  Swimming against her currents would only frustrate us both, so now I just go with her flow.  Happy Muse, Happy Life (or something like that).  To accommodate her capriciousness, I always have several different stories going at once.  Working within her mood spectrum, I can now apply her stories into one of the following fantasy sub-categories; classically-styled heroic fantasy, action-adventure fantasy, or "fantaisie-noir".  Her mercurial whims were one of the main reasons that I wanted to create three separate continents for my story-world (one "civilized", one "mystical", and one "wild") so that she can explore each of these realms independently, depending on her mood.  Essentially, I have given her three different "sandboxes" to play in, each with its own set of "toys" (characters, etc.).  So far, this flexible method makes her happy, which allows us to focus on at least one of my stories.  Each story seems to take longer to complete, but in the end, I'll have three stories to show for our effort instead of just one. 

Updated Goals for ROW80 (Round 2)
My goal for the “Spring Round” of ROW80 is to write three novellas (approximately 20,000 words apiece), for a total word-count of 60,000 words (or more).  All three novellas will be written simultaneously (again, alternating back-and-forth to accommodate my Muse), and each will vary in tone and style.  I have three story-candidates in mind, but I am still outlining and plotting these ideas, working on old ideas even as my Muse gives me new ones.  The story ideas are constantly changing right now, so until my Muse and I settle on what we want to write, I can’t really go into much details just yet.  I’ll elaborate more in a future post as I know more.  I know for sure that all three novellas will fall under the fantasy-genre of “sword & sorcery” (I know, shocking huh? — bet you didn’t see that coming, did you?).  During the first month of my 80-day writing challenge, I will be writing a thousand words a day (totaling 30,000 words) at Camp NaNoWriMo.  Here is My Camper Profile if you want to follow my progress during the month of April.  I hope to have three first-draft novellas started during that month, which I will further develop and refine during the remainder of ROW80 (Round 2).  That's the plan, anyway.  This is going to be one crazy adventure, I assure you!

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