When the Muse Misfires...

The women of mystery seem to have little problem gluing butt to chair and setting pen to paper. However I, for one, admit to requiring the occasional nudge in an interesting new direction. Sometimes I get lazy and resist going deep. Or I lose my sense of humor and find myself incapable of composing amusing posts or the witty dialogue that would so enhance my novel.

Lately I’ve had fun with some iGoogle gadgets for writers. Here’s one from Mood Room Press, called Writer’s Idea Bank. It generates a couple of sentences of prose imagery to inspire plot, setting, and a storyline. If you’re not delighted with the suggestion presented, just hit refresh for another. (I only wish that Chinese fortune cookies were as versatile!)

Here’s the suggestion that Writer’s Idea Bank has currently displayed on my iGoogle page:

“Rewrite the story of Noah’s Arc with a child on a leash. Now imagine this...the bored schoolgirls are clapping, while a man in the shadows loads a rifle.”

I don’t know about you, but I envision a pair of adolescents – a boy and a girl with diverse gene pools – being dragged at the end of a rope onto a spaceship by aliens. The man in the shadows loading a rifle is no doubt a dad, desperate to bring those aliens to their knees. The bored schoolgirls, however, stump me a little. I can see them in pleated skirts perched side-by-side on the rail (do spaceships have rails?) kicking their knee-high and penny-loafer clad heels. I wonder, however, why they’re bored under such circumstances, and clapping. Perhaps they’ve been brainwashed and now cater to the whims of kidnapping aliens?

Ready for another? Here goes:

“Two French girls arrive in Greece with a pot of clover honey. The sky drizzles a cold grey rain; a baron walks in with a knife, and the thief disappears in the shadows.”

Seems to me the folks at Mood Room Press are either fellow crime writers or purveyors of erotica. (Just joking...I’m well aware that what’s at work here is some demonic artificial intelligence.)

So...on a dark and stormy night, a baron holds a knife over two nubile French maidens shipped as slaves to a remote Greek isle. The girls have been forced, presumably by the perverse and diabolical baron, to enhance their charms with a liberal dousing of honey. We hope against hope that the thief in the shadows will come quickly to their rescue. But in a cunning plot twist, the young baron proves more gallant than randy. Fending off the thief, who in fact is a trader in the white-slave market, the baron wields his blade, slicing the rope that binds the girls’ wrists, and frees them forthwith. They are grateful....

Enough. Enough. Here’s one better in the writer’s block department. A friend just sent me the name of a book review called “Burning Ambition: What to do about those who write better than you.” The book itself? “Brock Clarke’s “An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.”

I dare you to come up with a better solution for those moments when the muse turns a deaf ear!

-Lois