Muse
My creativity has taken a beating lately. I've
begun working close to full-time at Sea World this
week, and we've been tasked with starting work at
5:00 a.m., well before the crack of dawn—which
means the alarm clock rouses me shortly after 4:00
a.m. As physically demanding as the work is, I come
home exhausted, yet it still seems just
wrong to go to bed at 8:00 or 9:00 in the
evening. So each day, I become cumulatively more
and more tired. Such a state of fatigue hardly
inspires the creative impulse. My muse has been
passed out for days.
But today, she met me while I took an afternoon
nap, vividly bringing to life the dramatic opening
scene of a movie in my dreams. It played out like a
classic western or barbarian movie: a gang of thugs
ravage a town while the lone hero rides out,
ignoring the plight of the townspeople. After the
baddies leave, the remorseful hero returns to view
the carnage, meets a beautiful woman who survived
by hiding out, and vows revenge. A trite idea,
certainly, but the characters came to life in my
head. I saw the raider chieftain urinate on the
body of the dead king (mayor?) after taking over
the town. I felt the anger of the mercenary hero as
he passed the raiders on his way out of town,
knowing full well what they were about to do. My
muse even casted the role of the survivor woman for
me, bringing Emily
Watson to life in my dream.
Story ideas like this come to me from all
sources. Sometimes they appear in dreams, as this
one did; more often, they materialize in that
twilight time between wakefulness and sleep as I go
to bed. Other times, the look on the face of a
passerby or the specific pattern of a landscape
might awaken an idea inside of me. Most of the
time, these story "kernels" just end up in a Word
file on my hard drive, the electronic equivalent of
a dusty old box kept on the top shelf of a closet.
But every now and then, like scattered droplets of
mercury, enough of them collect to form the
beginnings of a true story.
I've been far too distracted by the harsh
reality of trying to find a full-time job and pay
the bills to do much writing beyond this
not-quite-daily column and the writing I get paid
for. But my dream today reawakened the urge to get
back to dramatic writing. If the dolphins
don't tire me out too much, maybe I can finish off
one of my short stories—or perhaps even start
my next screenplay. (Note the words "maybe" and
"perhaps," the staples of all procrastinating
writers.)
©2003 Michael
Strickland ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
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What is "The Daily Strick"?
I have long called
myself a writer, but too often I don't do
what a writer must do daily: write. So
you, dear reader, are the beneficiary of
my resolution to make a positive change in
at least one area of my life. Every single
day of this new year (almost), I will
write something, anything, and post it
here. It is my intention to use this daily
exercise to jump-start my too-long-dormant
creative energies, and perhaps generate
some worthwhile material this year.
Hopefully you will find at least an
occasional amusement or insight in my
daily musings.
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a Comment
July Columns:
7/21: Hiatus
7/17: Death Ship
7/16: The Da Vinci Code
7/15: Bad Moon Rising
7/14: Adios, Compay
7/13: Ty Odeh
7/10: Muse
7/6: Memories
7/4: On the Road Again
7/3: Onion Valley
7/2: Happy Independence Day
Previous months in The Archive
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