Stephen King talks about inspiration:
There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust …He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level… You have to do all the grunt labor… while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you….[But] he’s got the inspiration…[He’s got] the bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me. I know. ( Stephen King, On Writing, Scribner, 2000, p. 144,145)
Before I go to sleep, at night, I don’t talk to a cigar smoking guy in the basement. He’s not mine. He belongs to Stephen King.
I talk to the ladies. Wearing sexy, black lace lingerie held together with red ribbons they listen to me. There are at least three of them and more in the background, and they look like they came out of a saloon on Gunsmoke. They have long, dark curly hair pulled up into loose buns, with tendrils falling down, and wise eyes. Why are they ladies? Why do they look like that? Who knows. I tell them what I have to figure out for my story, and they surprise me in the morning.
The power of the subconscious fascinates me. I’m trying to not analyze it. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter if I understand the creative process as long as it works.
My thoughts on craft for this Monday morning.
What’s in your basement?