Depictions of the literary Muse always show some dreamy ethereal woman draped in a classical Greek robe, with brilliant ideas swirling like rainbows around her perfectly coiffed head.
Ha. I wish. Here’s the conversation I had with my Muse this week:
Me, strolling up to the Muse’s door on Monday: *knock, knock* Hey, there…
Muse: What’s the matter with you? Can’t you read the “Do Not Disturb” sign? Get lost!
Me: Oops. It’s just that, well, I usually write my blog drafts today, and…
Muse: Scram!
Me: Okay, sorry. Um… maybe tomorrow…?
Muse: Yeah, whatever.
Me, shuffling bashfully up to the muse’s door on Tuesday: *knock, knock* Hi. Um…
Muse: You again? Whaddaya want?
Me: Um… a blog post…?
Muse: You gotta be shitting me! Didn’t I just bust my ass for you all morning on Book 13?
Me: Well, yeah; and I was really happy with your ideas. I appreciate it… but… you know I do a blog post once a week…
Muse: Oh, for… Okay, FINE! Check out the Urban Dictionary for “shower growler”: “When you’re showering you press your butt against the wall and fart, making a rumbling growl and vibrating the walls of the shower.”*
(*Note: This was not even the Muse’s own idea – my friend Chris emailed it to me last week.)
Me: Come on, I need more than that.
Muse, glowering dangerously: Oh yeah?
Me, finding a backbone at last and glowering in return: Yeah!
Muse, emitting a martyred sigh: Fine. Write a whole post about farts. How about a page of euphemisms? I got a million of ‘em! Blow the butt trumpet, strangle the stank monkey, play the colonic calliope, roast your Jockeys…”
Me, snickering in spite of myself: Well… I dunno…
Muse: …Do the one-cheek sneak; drop a barking spider; hit 7.4 on the Rectum scale; a turd honking for the right of way…
Me, stifling giggles: Stop! I’ve been trying to behave lately.
Muse: You? Behave?!? As if. How about this: “Shit a brick and fart a crowbar”. Or hey; how about some definitions? Like “Fartabout”: Walking away from everybody to ease out a fart so nobody notices. It’s like a walkabout, only you’re farting…
Me: There’s already a word for walking around and spreading the stink. It’s called ‘cropdusting’.
Muse, huffily: Well, fine, you obviously don’t need me, then. *slams the door in my face*
Me: Wait, I didn’t mean it that way! *knock, knock* C’mon, open up! I need you, really I do.
Muse: Get lost!
Me: *sigh*
So there you have it. I would have prepared a literary masterpiece for today, but my Muse had a bad case of brain flatulence.
Everybody else gets the classy chick with rainbows and perfect hair. I get this:
Diane’s Muse
So how was your week?
Author Diane Henders 
As Queen Victoria said when told they named a street after her, “We are not a Muse”.
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AAAAAAGH!!!! Brilliantly punned!
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If nothing else comes from this post…know that it had me in a belly laugh…a certifiable, gut busting belly laugh….again…it’s that visual thinker aspect of me…lol!!
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Oh, those vivid mental images! 😀 I’m glad you got a belly laugh – that makes my day!
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Very clever post. You and your muse have quite the relationship. She sounds very bossy. Even a muse needs a little break from time to time. 🙂
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Yes, I guess I’ve been overtaxing the Muse lately. At least s/he seems to think so… 😉
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Oh dear! Your muse looks too much like Hellhound on a bad day!
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Or at least on a bad hair day. 🙂
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Funny, el Tea, I was thinking the same thing… except for the eye patch. And the stick-like arms. And the beer belly. Maybe it’s his Al Hamlin disguise – I should have drawn him with a comb-over. 😉
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Well, I don’t know exactly what I was expecting from the title (I’m a bit on the naive side) but it wasn’t this!!! Thanks for the . . . er . . . education . . . 😀
And I didn’t realize I had to have a muse. That must be where I’m going wrong. I was blaming my brain 🙂
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Oops, sorry about the “education”. Does this come under the category of “once it’s seen it can never be un-seen”?
And it’s definitely the Muse. Couldn’t be our brains.
…Could it? 😉
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I hope your muse doesn’t come with smells! 😄
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Uh, you mean some don’t…?
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😄😄😄
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No smells so far… at least none where I can’t personally verify their origin…
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Some days it just doesn’t pay…I still got a chuckle out of your Muse–she’s no shrinking/stinking violet!
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“Stinking violet” – LOL! To be honest, I get a chuckle out of my Muse most days, too. It’s only when the Muse gets cranky that we have a problem. 😉
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Well, not all muses are nice. Sometimes they piss us off in order to motivate new ideas. I mean you did get a whole blog post. Right? Just say’n.
and check this out in the urban dictionary: crop dusting, “farting while walking; walking while farting;”
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That’s true; I did get a post out of it. And I’m glad I was right about the cropdusting – I’d hate to have pissed of my Muse over nothing. 😉
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The exchanges I have with whatever passes for my muse, if they can be called conversations, generally contain the phrase, “…and the horse you rode in on!” followed immediately thereafter by the sounds of doors slamming and/or glass breaking. The other racket I’ve managed to convince my neighbors was a vehicle backfiring. Or several vehicles. Until just before the cops showed up.
Think of it as a hate/hate relationship.
This whole muse thing just isn’t working for me. Er, either, as it were. Just sayin’… From my phone, your progress chart looks like about two pixels’ worth of movement from last week. Maybe it’d look better from a bigger screen.
Either way, about two pixels is all the progress I’ve made this week, too. A bigger screen. Yeah, we’ll just go with that. 🙂
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Yep, I hear you. (It was actually three pixels’ worth for me; whoop-dee-do.) Yesterday I spent three hours on Book 13, and then I looked at what I’d written and went, “Really? It took me three hours to write four people going downstairs and getting into a vehicle?!?”
To be fair to the Muse, though, I did spend a significant part of that three hours editing what I’d written the previous day. But still…
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Yeah, when the ‘writing time’ sort of oozes over into ‘editing time.’ Hm. Yeah. That.
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I knew you’d understand. 🙂
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👍
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