Kill your muse

People talk about muses during Nanowrimo. People complain about their muse abandoning them, their muse pestering them with new ideas that they can't accomodate, their muse sitting about looking confused. People have names for their muse and can provide you with detailed physical descriptions and outline their personalities with insight that would put a criminal psychologist to shame. I kid you not.

You hear about muses the most is when a writer has been abandoned by their muse. This happens to everyone - you charge out of a scene, high on having just written 1,000 words of brutal fisticuffs, romantic yearning or snappy dialogue. And hit a wall. You can't think what to do next, or you can but it suddenly seems dull after what you've just written. Your muse has abandoned you, so you stop writing. You visit the "Nanowrimo Ate My Soul" forum and announce that your muse has abandoned you. Immediately, sympathy is offered by the others huddled about, miserable and museless.

Bitter truth: your muse is not your friend. What sort of friend abandons you on the 16th of November, just when you needed them to stick by you? Your muse will never write so much as a word for you in the whole of November. The only contribution your muse will make will be to delay and confound you.

When you're blocked, you need to find a way to carry on writing. In my experience of Nanowrimo, inspiration comes only a few times in the month. The rest of it is a miserable slog in demoralising and infuriating blocks of 10,000 words, when you move characters from one unsatisfying scene to another, forcing them to mouth unconvincing dialogue. No muse will write those 10,000 words for you, but it has to be written. Professional writers don't sit about whimpering about their muse leaving them. They have deadlines to meet, so they find a way to write. You need to find ways to make yourself write, no matter what.

And kill your muse. If all else fails, put him or her in your story and have something dreadful happen. Maybe they are the victim in your murder mystery. Or the third Orc who gets his head chopped off in the fight in the first chapter. Or someone in the background of a scene who gets hit by a car. But kill them, and soon.