Had It Been Another Day, Muse Might Have Spoke the Other Way

I’ve blogged before about how much I love The Beatles’ “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and how profoundly I think it points out the possibilities all of us pass up, every single day, and never even know we missed.  I just had a moment where I wondered what WRITING possibilities I miss and never know about by giving my muse free rein one night and not another.

What happened was this: my hero just proposed to the heroine in the middle of the night, in his underwear, in a context that had nothing to do with compromising her virtue.

This turn of events was unexpected. I actually hadn’t had the proposal figured out from the beginning; my outline literally had the question “what prompts him to propose?” and I had to work out a few more pieces leading up to it before I had the inspiration. And, let me tell you, muse outdid himself with this one. I did not see a comedic proposal scene happening, but yet it works perfectly for them.

So what I then wondered was this–would I have come up with this zany scene if I had written it tomorrow night instead?  Does my creativity come from such a rational, logical place of synthesis that this idea would have come to me anyway as the most natural and proper way and means of bringing them together, or would I have missed this opportunity completely if my mind hadn’t been operating on the precise mix of experiences and thoughts and energy/exhuastion it is tonight?

I actually have some anecdotal evidence that my “creativity” really IS such a rational thing–scenes I have written months apart on a project pushed way to the back burner, that are essentially the same, the second one written without conscious knowledge of the first. Maybe my subconscious just remembered the way I had solved the puzzle the first time when I forgot I had solved it and went back to it a second time? (Actually, this is entirely possible…an older friend/mentor of mine was helping her mother recover from a stroke, and she said that her mom had to relearn everything but once she did it once, she had it–like those synapses in her brain had been disconnected but, once reconnected, were healed as if they hadn’t been broken. I imagine creative insights could easily work on a similar principle, and once that connection was formed once, even consciously forgotten it would probably be more likely to come up again than a new solution because that solution already exists in my neural network.)

I can’t dwell on this kind of paranoid reality.  Instead I will choose, like McCartney, to focus on the fact that I DID look that way and see that face. What I don’t know I missed can’t hurt me.

Sometimes John Lennon Just Says It Best

I am in a funk right now when it comes to writing. I think some of it is exhaustion, and some of it is boredom. I’ve been working on this thing too long. I’ve lost the ability to hold it all in my head, and I can barely understand what I’m working on. I want to be done more for the sake of not feeling this story and the need to finish it hanging like a millstone about my neck than because I am excited to read it back. When I try to picture a scene that I’m writing, nothing comes. I write anyway, and it’s like tagging gaffiti in the dark, and sometimes it is leavable and sometimes I have to paint right over it.  You know how when you’ve been up for 20 hours determined to finish something, but you hit that point where you’re so tired it’s almost counterproductive to keep working, and it will take you three times the time as a task would if you were fresh? I think that’s where I’m at with this one. I just need it done.

At this point novel-writing is an exercise in stubborness more than it is a pleasure or an investment in something I think might pay me a reward. I’ve just…come this far. I can’t quit now. But god damn I’m tired.

That is all. Time to go erase the 500 words I just spent all afternoon dragging from my brain like splinters, because they are just not right….

“This Could Only Happen To Me”

A few months back I went through a phase of rediscovering the Beatles. I was basically listening to them nonstop at work for about a month. As I heard certain songs for the first time in years (or in some cases ever), I would find myself thinking of one of my heroes and how the song could be his theme song.  Some were love songs, some were jealous songs, some were pieces like “I’m So Tired.” Eventually I found that pretty much all my heroes have a Beatles theme song.

Strangely, the one exception was the hero of the work in progress, whose relationship dynamic with the heroine seemed like the one angle of romance not explored by the Fab Four. Which is basically impossible since the entire front half of their catalog is nothing but love songs. So I kept listening and thinking.

I tossed around some of the more generic love songs in my head as being okay for him, but I have finally come to the conclusion that they actually DID write the perfect song for him: “I Should Have Known Better.”  Because the whole point of how his relationship with the heroine develops is that it blindsides him. He should have expected it with someone like her, only he didn’t, and by the time he realized he should have, it was too late.

“I…should have known better with a girl like you, that I would love everything that you do, and I do”

“I…never realized what a kiss could be; this could only happen to me”

“I never realized a lot of things before; if this is love you gotta give me more”

Yes. That encapsulates his experience pretty perfectly.

 

Though I’m Past One Hundred Thousand Miles, I’m Feeling Very Still…

Realized last night that I had crossed the 100K word mark without noting or memorializing the occasion. Probably because, kind of like Major Tom, I can no longer feel the momentum of my journey.

And today in Lily’s Random and Sometimes Disturbing Aalogies to Novel Writing: “I think my spaceship knows which way to go” clearly makes reference to my subconscious/muse/creative id.

So…my brain is named the starship Apollo?

I think my spaceship knows which way to go, indeed.

(And here is where ADD-synthesis brain took this: “The captain never traveled at high speeds in unsafe vehicles, unless you considered his mind an unsafe vehicle.” -Cosmic Banditos by A.C. Weisbecker- It’s…been a long week.)

“Lil Red Riding Hood”: Basically Every Romance Novel Ever

I don’t mean the fairy tale but the song by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, which has recently resurfaced in my listening due to the Volvo commercial. (Side note: cannot wait to hear the full Laura Gibson cover of the song, which is what plays in the commercial!)

If you don’t know the song or haven’t heard it recently enough to remember the words, here’s a video-mash of Betty Boop (for you to look at while you listen) set to the song.

The song is much more powerful than it should be. It’s kind of a goofy little song about a fairy tale, and yet it captures a very real and fascinating aspect of courtship–the idea of predator/prey that is subverted by the seductive allure of the supposed prey.

The narrator of the song is obviously a wolf stalking Little Red Riding Hood, lured by her big eyes and full lips. He masquerades as something safe and protective, biding his time…waiting for the opportune moment, as it were. But by the end of the song he’s talking about his heart and how he could love her, promising that even big bad wolves can be good (for the right woman). The wolf-call/”I mean, baaah” ending makes the last verse ambiguous–is his claim simply part of the seduction, or is it true? Is he moving from wolf in disguise to wolf who is lying about the nature of his interest, or has he been snared by her being “everything a big bad wolf could want”?  If the latter is the case…who is really hunting whom?

The reason I say this song is like, okay, not every, but a damn good lot of romance novels is because of the theme many of them have of a man who resists the idea of marriage being brought around to it by the one woman who is perfect for him. Many romance heroes start the novels out as dark, dangerous men–dangerous either through a violent/instable nature or through a cynicism that threatens to destroy the heroine. They experience an attraction they intend to use nefariously, acting very much the sexual predator of the heroine’s innocence or social position, only to realize too late that her lures are stronger than his resistance to love/marriage/commitment. 

And it’s basically the ultimate female fantasy, and what romance writers have been writing about at least since Austen–the idea that any man, no matter how much of a “big bad wolf” he is, can be tamed by the particular right woman for him. It is a fantasy that allows both the excitement of the hunt and the safety of the gentle heart in the wolf’s body (under the sheepskin). In my experience of men, I think the tri-layer is actually pretty accurate. Pretty much all the men I’ve known in my life–not just men I dated but friends, brother’s friends, family, co-workers–have had the surface facade of civility over a traditionally masculine bravado/carelessness, but at heart were good, caring, men. It’s the role society tells them they should play, and I personally think it’s more fascinating and more special to get to see into the heart of a man who doesn’t open up easily than to have one who puts everything on his sleeve.

Because, let’s be honest here…women love the chase, too. We just have to make the men think they’re the ones doing the chasing.