Akting Out

We all have our moments, or places, when we do our best thinking. For me, it’s either on long walks, or when I’m doing the dishes.

In my socks.

On the tile floor.

But we’ll get back to that.
So there I am, doing the dishes, minding my own damn business when my old, familiar, finicky friend, the Muse, decides to drop by. And oh my, the things she has to say. Utter brilliance, they are. The kinds of things that would make old Will Shakespeare himself stand up and applaud.

It’s always a sequence. I freeze in mid-scrub. I no longer notice how hot the water is. My eyes widen as the Muse pours inspirational gold into my mind. The words. Such words. They must be recorded and now.

And I’m off. I’ve learned to keep my computers on for just such an occasion. I go racing out of the kitchen, looking like Daffy Duck going downhill. In fact, I’ve actually fallen flat on my face before. But the pain doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters but getting the Muse’s words on paper.

But I have learned that the Muse plays a dirty trick on you. As she speaks, she’s actually placed a time bomb in your imagination. There’s no timer, although it seems to go off the second you’re ready to bring her words into reality.

So I sit at the computer, raise my hands to the keyboard, and then…pleh.

The bomb goes off. The Muse is gone. The finicky little…we won’t go there…took her words with her.
I hate those moments; those first few seconds when my mind has frozen and I can’t think of anything to write. It’s like being abandoned on date night by someone you were really excited about seeing.

I have ways of coping. I pace. I talk out loud, trying to remember what she told me while questioning my own sanity. But it’s okay, I tell myself. I passed crazy a long time ago, but if I get these words out of my head and into the real world, it’ll all be okay.

So after wearing a groove into the carpet and having full-fledged conversations with myself, convinced that I’ve plucked the important aspects of the Muse’s visit out of the pit, I take my seat at the computer, and then…pleh.

At this point, I usually scream, cuss, moan, or turn on the 360 and lose myself in somebody else’s world, but since the latter isn’t an option anymore (yet) I had to find another way around it.

And then, just last week, it hit me.
The Muse may be finicky, but she demands hard work and total dedication. As well she should, considering what she brings to the table. You don’t just walk into the mine and picking gold off the walls. You have to dig for it.

So now, I sit down and just start writing. It only has to be relevant to what the Muse has told me; it doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to make sense. It just has to be out of my head and in the real world. I’ve churned out five pages of crud not even the sanitation department would touch. It doesn’t matter, because no one else has to see it.

Then, when all the crud is out of my head, I go back through it, sometimes tracing the words with my finger, and there. That one sentence, quote, or scene. That’s what I’ve been looking for. That’s what the Muse was trying to tell me.

When the Muse hits me now, I try to let it happen instead of making mad dashes for my computer (it keeps me out of intensive care). I get to my computer and pour my imagination onto the screen. I mine later and keep the good parts.

Thanks for reading, and good luck in your endeavors.

(c) Avery K. Tingle for Akting Out LLC

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