Summer is writer’s block season.
Every summer, I involuntarily take a break from my almost daily writing habit. I spend the days kicking my hibernating muse in the side only to see it stretch, yawn, scratch its scrabble tiled face – which frankly needs a letter trim by mid-summer – roll over, and curl back up. Sometimes it talks in its sleep, and I catch a word or two hundred out of its drabble-gook, but that’s a very lucky day.
Sometimes, during the summer, I get desperate and I borrow somebody else’s muse…
Ok, fine, you’re right, that’s a lie. Only a white one. I just steal muses, not a big deal, really…
Yes, I know it’s un-hygienic, damn it!
But what is a writer to do when his own damn muse is a lazy ass who falls asleep as soon as the temperature rises above seventy degrees Fahrenheit? And the muses I take are lonely chums people have neglected for centuries anyway. They’re practically dead already. I can hardly get a blog article out of some.
Don’t tell my muse I told you this, but I found one of my favorite muses floundering in Big Bear Creek near the Eagle Cap Wilderness in Oregon. The fellow was lanky and curly, with lexicon hair and ink-drop-eyes. I even bothered to name this one; its name was Lexi.
I liked Lexi better than any muse – including my own – and I could have channeled Lexi all year long if its owner hadn’t made a claim and taken Lexi away from me. I combed a whole a short story from Lexi’s hair. I miss that muse. Why couldn’t I have that muse?
Oh, and don’t tell my muse when it wakes up…it doesn’t even know I “borrow” other muses. I’m surprised it can’t smell them on me.
B.E. MATTICE 