The garden or the grind house?

I don’t know what you think writing is like. I don’t invite the Muse in for tea, pour an extra cup, and let the words she whispers flow in silver rivulets onto the page, where a story slowly grows like a vine, until it bursts into the blossom of a draft.

The Muse hardly ever fucking calls me. Instead I drink alone, fretting over half completed limbs, loose hands and arms I grabbed just cause they looked good at the time. But now they’re all jammed in a literary freezer, turning blue with cold while I figure out how the hell to piece them all together. It takes forever. Months, sometimes years, go by before I figure out how to suture one of these assemblages into something recognizable. I lash the parts and passages together in huge stitches, hoping no one will notice. And if they do, I can always fix it later.

In my head, this thing was beautiful. I saw it all at once, knowing that this would be an easy one. Then I started writing. What a trainwreck. The body was supposed to be simple, and now it’s a bloody mess. Nothing connects. Why did I spend so much time on these veins? They don’t even go anywhere. This character lies mute and ugly and stupid, distracting me with its mechanical twitches when I thought it would be moving gracefully through a plot by now.

No such luck. It’s not even the character’s fault. I can’t blame the bloodless bitch for stumbling over the huge gaps in story I’ve laid before her. Might as well ask someone to dance over a minefield. Yeah, I could have outlined, given the girl a map to follow. But you’re forgetting my beatific vision––the one I saw before I tried to write it all down. I didn’t need a map. I had the grace of the storytelling gods for one split second.

Oh, well. Back to work. The alternative is letting the whole works rot in a lost folder somewhere, the tick-tock of the characters’ hearts driving me up a wall while I try to move onto other things. And every once in a while, I remember my first idea, and I think I can make this story work. I will make it pretty. I will chip away at the crap prose I slapped on that corpse of a plot until it resembles something real. I will shape it into something people would want to look at, not run away from.

That means cleaning up the blood and the bones. Teaching these characters to speak like people, not like cartoons from another planet. Hammering this story into submission, until you can’t see the broken edges and dark spots where the logic leaked out. Secretly, nine tenths of writing is scrubbing out the bloodstains.

Occasionally, I try to change. Start slow. Draft an outline. Plot out rows and fall on my knees to dig long lines into which I could drop little seeds of well-chosen words, to then water carefully with more words, nursing a paragraph, then a chapter, into life. So pretty. Pretty enough to pick and show others.

That is, however, the exception. I don't have the patience to work like that all the time. Or maybe I'm still addicted to the idea of that single mad rush of inspiration. Like a gambler, I can always convince myself that the next story will be the winner. That one will be perfect.

Until then, I keep at it, with thread and needle. Excuse me, I have to go attend to my story. It's screaming again.