Guest Post: How to Change Your Muse’s Priorities

Today, the Wordbitches are pleased to bring you a guest post from P.J. Kaiser. P.J. stays at home in Hoboken, New Jersey with her two children and writes between loads of laundry.  She writes mostly short fiction and hasn’t settled on a genre yet.  She has been published in various anthologies including “Best of Friday Flash Vol. 1,” “50 Stories for Pakistan,” “100 Stories for Queensland,” and the latest anthology from eMergent Publishing, “Nothing But Flowers.”  P.J. is also the co-moderator of “Tuesday Serial,” a weekly collection of links to the latest installments of some of the web’s best online serials.  P.J. is working on publishing a collection of her stories and is working on her first novel.  You can see more of P.J. on her website or find her on Twitter @pj_kaiser and on Facebook.

I tend to be a “LIFO” writer.  For anybody who’s studied accounting and inventory management techniques in college (and who hasn’t?), you know that means “Last in – First out.”  In production terms, that means the old, out-of-date inventory widgets are on the bottom of the pile and your workers keep loading your trucks with the new, shiny widgets that have just been received, leaving those old widgets on the bottom to collect dust. Okay, maybe not literally, but this is what happens from an accounting perspective.  Anyway …

It works like that for my muse and me.  My writing inspirations keep getting displaced by newer, shinier ideas that have arrived most recently.  When I have an extended amount of time to write (which is almost never), I tend to uncoil those ideas one by one.  I write a draft – or at least a summary – for the latest idea, then I move on to the next-to-latest, etc.  Problem is, I never actually get back to the earliest ones.  In some cases, it’s just as well because those ideas may not be as good as the newest ones anyway.

But what if they are good ideas and you’re kind of itching to give them a try, but the sparkly new ideas keep getting in the way?  Or what if you have other reasons for needing to work on older pieces – e.g., a submission deadline or you’re writing a piece for a special project or at somebody’s request?

I’m working on editing a group of my stories to publish as an anthology.  That means I’ve been blowing the dust off of some old stuff and trying to edit and, in some cases, rewrite them.  There are some techniques that I’ve been using recently to get fired up about these stories that my muse doesn’t seem keen to work on:

1)  Sometimes it’s enough to just read through the draft of what I’ve done so far and then carry on writing or editing from there.  Other times, however, launching myself headlong into the piece in this way is just disheartening.  I see how much work the piece still needs and I get discouraged before I even start.  There’s where some of the other tips come in handy …

2) Think about what inspired you to write the piece in the first place.  Was it inspired by something that occurred to you?  Something that you saw in a movie?  A photo?  A writing prompt?  Brainstorm a list of things that inspired you to either begin or continue the piece.  Then re-immerse yourself in these items and give yourself some time (set a targeted amount of time up front) to contemplate the inspiration for the story and THEN begin work again.  Sometimes just a few minutes is enough to get your head back in the place to carry on, but other times (particularly for longer pieces) maybe an hour or an afternoon is needed.

3) Think about what inspiration tools you used when you first drafted the piece. Were you listening to particular music to put you in the mood for writing?  Were you drinking a particular tea?  Some people are just idiosyncratic enough that these things can make all the difference.  Try to replicate the scene when you were drafting the piece and it just might inspire you to continue.

4) Pick up your research where you left off or begin research if you haven’t started it yet. I find that using things like Google Earth, Flickr, Wikipedia and websites found by Googling can be invaluable not only to enhance the realism of your story but also to put you in the proper frame of mind to envision the story.  And if you can’t envision the story, how can you put it to paper?

I hope these tips have been helpful.  Sometimes it’s not enough to be “in the mood” for writing, but you have to wrangle your muse and get her to focus where she should.  So, what about you?  What are your tips for changing your muse’s priorities?  Please share!