Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Turning the Screw

So that's Christmas. There goes all the good will and cheer, the New Years celebration, the Xmas crackers, turkey and cranberry, rejoicing in the fact that the world's clock has ticked over another year and we're all still here - gone and dusted. So long and thanks for all the fish, as one cool book said.

And with the new year comes the renewed drive. This is gonna be the year I do it, the year my name is up in lights. Here are my goals and now watch me reach for them. That type of thing.

Well, Darkling Muse doesn't work that way - unfortunately. He didn't stop over Christmas, didn't celebrate the way I wanted to. His dark circus continued their shows, his carnival companions taking no time off. His drive is formidable, sometimes more than I can cope with. The ideas (are they fictional or things that really happens backstage, beyond that heavy curtain? I shudder to think) come faster than I can write, blasting into my head on his hollering voice only to be echoed immediately by another.

He laughed when I told him I was going to post my New Years resolutions, threatened to involve me in his ideas in a whole new way, and the look upon his shadowed face when he said that - no, I'd rather not push him. So no New Years resolutions from me...

Darkling Muse doesn't believe in them. For him, each story is going to be better than the last, published in bigger magazines and collections. Every story is a stepping stone. He's a hard task-master - I'd hate to think what would happen should (and I'm whispering this so he won't hear me) he fail a resolution - were he to let them be known, that is...

So I'm learning his method - every story we write is going to win an award, is going to be published in a best-selling collection, gonna become a classick. And while the stories seep from my pores under his guidance, the first novel is going to be at publishers, relentlessly, until it is published. The second novel has already been started, and the drive is on to finish that now, too.

First though, I'd better finish the synopsis for the first (am almost there).

Oh-oh, he's just realized what I said - I'd better go now.