About that muse...

Maybe she's real. Maybe I knew it all along.

Have hope and find that distant tomorrow.

It could all be worth it.

Frustrated

I know my muse, though she is fickle and tormenting at times.

She aids me. She points the way, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by causing me to react.

She is the best thing I could hope for when it comes to inspiration.

So why isn't she real? Why can't I find a woman like her? Does she even exist? I don't know.

Distractions

A lot of things have kept me away.

I lost something important and have been trying to get it back. I was trying to finish another draft and succeeded. I looked for new ways to make stories, ways that didn't include the trappings of coercion and mind control.

I managed to get a few more query letters sent out over the past few days, all while eliciting the aid of a couple more people to tell me how good/bad/otherwise Vitamin F might be. Now I'm digging around on Mind & Machine again, making some interesting progress on it.

Break It Down Again

I get pulled into this whirlwind from time to time and I do what I can to control it.

I had a friend recently hook up with a woman who I don't think was worth his time. A destructive sort of individual that just made me see how easy it is to have dreams taken away. It got me working on Vitamin F in a way I haven't in a while. I'd been working on it, but not with strict regularity and diligence.

Of course, I've had something else play out as well. I'm trying to let go of someone close to my heart but not my life. It's one of those things I need to do so I can be free enough to be happy, but damn it, it just feels wrong sometimes. To put it in a little perspective, I don't know the moment I became friends--not acquaintances, but friends--with any of my friends, except for one.

How can I put my feelings for someone aside in my heart as well as in my life? I've had to shield my real feelings for Lyndsey from her for a long time. I don't know how to really do that without putting aside the feelings of friendship I have for her as well. It's a difficult thing and I don't want to think that I've just squandered or lost a real friend just because I couldn't really come to terms with the fact that, well, I can't have her.

That being said, it could easily be just a feeling I have for the moment. It could pass in time. Things could improve and I may even, someday find an awesome girl to be close friends with. But right now, I'm going to try and just worry about my writing. That's what's going to get me everything I really want in the long term anyway.

Then There Were Two

It's been a while since it first happened. Angie finished reading the first full draft of Vitamin F some time ago, probably about ten to twelve months ago. And as much as I'd like for a few others to read more of it, no one else has finished reading it up to this point.

That's what changed sometime in the last few days. About a month ago, I copied all of draft two for Rocky to read. A short while ago, he told me he'd finished reading it and was ready to give me notes. Should be fairly interesting.

As many people as I've got reading Vitamin F, I think, interestingly enough, that the next who finishes will have read draft three, which I just think is a bit funny and a bit sad.

Villains

I know people sometimes read horrible things in books and become appalled. I recall hearing how Stephen King has gotten hate mail for years about a scene in The Dead Zone where Greg Stillson kills a dog while trying to sell bibles. It's a rough scene, but Stillson does other terrible acts throughout that novel, but none hit that same emotional edge as when he kills that dog.

I recall also how in Critical Space, Greg Rucka uses the assassin Oxford to kill several long-time characters, one with calculated and false sexual overtones, another with cold, fast precision. A lot of Atticus Kodiak fans have problems with Critical Space, especially given his entanglements with the villain of Smoker, Drama.

Of course when people think of great villains, they like to bring up Hannibal Lecter or Darth Vader. These are great bad guys, but they are more dark shadows of ourselves, each showing different levels of charisma. In a lot of ways, these guys are known more for their charisma than for the horrible acts they play out. (Both Lecter and Vader do their most awful deeds off screen.)

I bring these thoughts up because I've been working on a way to get more use out of Delilah (Bridgett's best friend) in Vitamin F. The only flaw in doing this, is that I have to immerse myself in writing horrible acts, terrorists torturing and coercing people to achieve a desired effect. In a lot of ways, I'm doing this because I need the audience to hate Adam John and the Brotherhood of Life. But to hate them, they have to do the most vile things possible, with total disregard of any opinions other than their own.

Villains have to do horrible, terrible things to truly be worthwhile.

Recruits

I managed to get two more people to at least express interest in reading my work today. Plus, yesterday I realized there was someone I should have asked about Vitamin F a long time ago.

Why the sudden shift? Why the beta reader recruitment drive? I was reading "The Warrior," by Jim Butcher (it's the newest Dresden Files novella) and it ends with a character remarking how people rarely take the choices they're offered to make their lives better. That's absolutely true and I knew that I needed to do something to get my act in gear.

By the end of the week, at last two people will have read my work for the first time. One of those was earlier today and was pretty close to the target demographic for Vitamin F.