Romance of the Muses

[Val Strate]

A few days ago as I was driving down the local highway in the company vehicle, a similar sound floated on the radio waves and the tune from the local classic rock station sent a pang in my sentimental heart. The song that played was called "Wild Horses" and was performed by the band "The Rolling Stones". I felt my lip quiver and I could have cried but I knew I needed to keep my composure because I was picking up two of my "clients" in about a half hour and confidence is of the essence in my line of work. For it was about five years ago, I was sitting in a tiny dorm room, curled in a blanket and typing the Romance of a muse whom I adore. I could only dream of her life, and so I did in fan fiction. I met brilliant writers in Hnet and had been writing along side them about five years before that moment. We wrote, we composed masterpieces of computer written adventures that lived in our heads and were expressed with the tales and myths we wrote of the world of Hazzard and all who lived there. Some of the fables that were expressed were so soul filled that they needed background music as we wrote. One such song that was used with my muse and another was that very song, "Wild Horses". I could feel the muse that was buried inside my mind cry with tears. She ached for the love of her craft and for the fellow muses and their talents.

I hope to return to writing but the life that I currently live has little time for my muse. However there is time for her, someday.

[i1976]

I sincerly hope someday your muse will convince you to write again.

Just few lines per day, sometimes it's enough. But... yeah, when you start with few lines... you can't stop, 'cause what's inside you starts to overflow, and it's fantastic and terrific at the same time: sometimes I wonder if writing (and having all this BIG and EMOTIONAL world inside you, something to form and to give a sense to, day by day, story by story) is a gift or a curse.

Sometimes I think it's a great gift... but sometimes I'd prefer to be ... less dreamy, imaginative and sensitive, to live more in the realm of reality (what IS) than in the realm of imagination and possibilities (what COULD BE).

The hard life of an introvert, LOL (the hard life of an INFJ)

"DON'T BEND; DON'T WATER IT DOWN; DON'T TRY TO MAKE IT LOGICAL; DON'T EDIT YOUR OWN SOUL ACCORDING TO THE FASHION. RATHER, FOLLOW YOUR MOST INTENSE OBSESSIONS MERCILESSLY." Franz Kafka

I like this quote from Kafka... even if... well, Kafka for sure wasn't happy, but a tormented soul. It's why sometimes I think of writing (and HAVING to write, having to follow your obsessions) as a curse. Uh, no, I don't liken me to Kafka, LOL, HE was a genius, and He was a real writer (I'm someone who likes to write fanfic... pretty different, LOL, but it's somehow a form of "writing", a form of "art").

Edited December 30, 2012 by i1976

[JadedPhoenixBurning]

A few days ago as I was driving down the local highway in the company vehicle, a similar sound floated on the radio waves and the tune from the local classic rock station sent a pang in my sentimental heart. The song that played was called "Wild Horses" and was performed by the band "The Rolling Stones". I felt my lip quiver and I could have cried but I knew I needed to keep my composure because I was picking up two of my "clients" in about a half hour and confidence is of the essence in my line of work. For it was about five years ago, I was sitting in a tiny dorm room, curled in a blanket and typing the Romance of a muse whom I adore. I could only dream of her life, and so I did in fan fiction. I met brilliant writers in Hnet and had been writing along side them about five years before that moment. We wrote, we composed masterpieces of computer written adventures that lived in our heads and were expressed with the tales and myths we wrote of the world of Hazzard and all who lived there. Some of the fables that were expressed were so soul filled that they needed background music as we wrote. One such song that was used with my muse and another was that very song, "Wild Horses". I could feel the muse that was buried inside my mind cry with tears. She ached for the love of her craft and for the fellow muses and their talents.

I hope to return to writing but the life that I currently live has little time for my muse. However there is time for her, someday.

I'm glad that you have reconnected with your muse. Now hold on to her and don't let her go. My own abandoned me about two months ago so I can feel your pain when it was gone. I'm happy for you.

[i1976]

I'm glad that you have reconnected with your muse. Now hold on to her and don't let her go. My own abandoned me about two months ago so I can feel your pain when it was gone. I'm happy for you.

Sometimes, when you feel your muse is gone (or when you don't understand what path you have to follow or you're not satisfied 'bout the path you're following), it's very useful to go back to the origin, re-reading your first stories (or stories from other authors you liked very much) in order to find again that spirit and that happiness in writing (and reading), washing away that sort of "emotional garbage" sometimes you met along your way (writer's blocks, doubts, lack in self-confidence, disappointments and so on).

Really, it helps a LOT.

For example, I'm "fixing" my oldest stories, 'cause grammar and style were really simple and elemental... they were my first stories written in a foreign language. I'm trying to improve these stories... without deny them, anyway (changing something here and there, but not so much, and fixing grammar).

I'm having really fun, and, surprisingly, I've found again the same feelings (positive feelings) I had while I was writing those stories... and it helps me in my on-going story too.

Another trick: go back to the scenes I've loved the most in the original show.. in order to "catch" characters' personality and relationships as much as possibile, don't losing the "spirit" of the original show: I love to re-write DOH in a more mature and dramatic way (a sort of 8th series), but... sometimes I need to re-watch some dialogues, scenes, looks and so on in order to write characters fitting the original show (focusing most on Enos' and Daisy's characters, OK, in my perspective, but not forgetting nor "betraying" the other ones nor the original show's values and meanings).

Some people say we have to look at the future, always. I don't think so: I'm the kind of person who looks a lot at the past, to remember where I'm from and why I'm this way.

[RogerDuke]

I loved those last two sentences. I'm like that too!

[JadedPhoenixBurning]

Some people say we have to look at the future, always. I don't think so: I'm the kind of person who looks a lot at the past, to remember where I'm from and why I'm this way.

That's similar to the phrase that I have up on my Facebook page.

History is the road map of where we've been. Without looking to where we've come from and how we got there, it is impossible to appreciate where we are. Without knowing where we are, how can we plan where we want to go tomorrow?

Anyway, I have started writing a new story based on the requests that I've received from readers to learn more about my OC Kira before she met the Dukes so I am writing on that story since Coy isn't talking to me lately. I'll be posting the second chapter of A Life of Hazards over on FFN in about an hour or so.

[i1976]

That's similar to the phrase that I have up on my Facebook page.

History is the road map of where we've been. Without looking to where we've come from and how we got there, it is impossible to appreciate where we are. Without knowing where we are, how can we plan where we want to go tomorrow?

Anyway, I have started writing a new story based on the requests that I've received from readers to learn more about my OC Kira before she met the Dukes so I am writing on that story since Coy isn't talking to me lately. I'll be posting the second chapter of A Life of Hazards over on FFN in about an hour or so.

Great phrase. I like it.

Sometimes, going back at our previous passions, ideas and feelings is the right path to follow. Kira is your origin (and you'll find your way thanks to her), and my first stories are my one, an origin I somehow denied, at some point .

[JadedPhoenixBurning]

Thanks i1976. I only wish that the ones that sent Pm's about her would leave reviews on the story. LOL!! Too shy for the review boards I guess. Kira is their "Guilty Pleasure" and they don't want others to know that they've gotten wrapped up in her and Jebb's story. Of course this story will be underway for a few chapters before a small glimpse of Jebb will be added.

Speaking of Kira, though, she has made her first appearance in a SEPARATE story altogether. I've loaned her out to DixieDavenport. I typed up scenes for her based on what she wanted and then she tweaked them to fit her story better and has just posted a chapter with Kira.

[i1976]

Thanks i1976. I only wish that the ones that sent Pm's about her would leave reviews on the story. LOL!!

Reviews' world is really mysterious, sometimes.

Anyway, speaking of the muse who's brought us to write fanfic, sometimes I wonder HOW and WHY she hit me... and any of you, what she's looking for and what's her... food.

I'm starting to understand a bit better my muse

I started to write fics, obviously, 'cause I'm a huge DOH's fan, but there's something more. When I like something (a book, a movie, a TV-show, an anime) I keep it alive in my mind: I did it since I was a little child, imagining a sort of "what if" after the story ended (or a "what if" along the story). Lately I've called it "keeping an illusion alive".

But this illusion needs a "food": this food is both the original food (the original movie, book, and so on), but, along the year, I've understood that this illusion's looked for other illusions to become stronger and stronger, and other illusions means other fanfic. I started to write fanfic thanks to other fanfic and thank to other writers. I started to write fanfic hoping to have the same effect some writer had on me on other possible writer (uhm.. is it complicated? I know).

It's why I really missed the old times here on Hazzardnet: round-robins, fanfics, challenges.... good and abundant food. Food for my muse beside the original show.

The problem with my muse it's she's become really... ehm... selective, more and more selective along the years . The more I write, the more I've become strict 'bout plots, characterizations, adherence to the original show, and so on. And my muse too.

Capricious muse, , sometimes I'd kill her, LOL

But... finally, I've found a pact with my muse. I've finally understood what she needs to work properly, whereas lately I've forced her along a path which risked to destroy the illusion: "don't change the old road for a new road, 'cause you know what you lose but you don't know what you find".

New food for her, no more rotten food, but genuine and "good old" food. If I give my muse a food she doesn't like, she risks to be poisoned... BAD thing for me.

OK, sorry for my complicated thoughts.

The meaning of this message? My muse needs old good food!!!!, so I re-start from the origin.

[JadedPhoenixBurning]

The more I write, the more I've become strict 'bout plots, characterizations, adherence to the original show, and so on. And my muse too.

I'm the same way. I am VERY selective in what I read. I've noticed that stories that I enjoyed 2 or 3 years ago are stories that I can't make myself read now since I find every single typo and plot-hole that I missed back when I was inexperienced. I then get on writer's nerves when I try to be helpful by pointing out what needs to be corrected.

The critical reader in me also makes it where 99% of the stories that I open up are never even read through the first chapters since I can tell very fast that it just isn't for me. Though perhaps that is for the best in some aspect since I was once given the advice to try to read works that are a higher quality of your own in order to improve your own writing since your writing will be influenced by what you read. Garbage in = Garbage out. So as your own writing improves so will your inner reader's ability at appreciating greater qualities of work.

[i1976]

I've noticed that stories that I enjoyed 2 or 3 years ago are stories that I can't make myself read now since I find every single typo and plot-hole that I missed back when I was inexperienced.

I understand what you're saying.

But I'm really strict to ME too. I'm the most strict judge of myself. It's why I've decided to re-write my oldest stories... 'cause, reading them NOW, I'm... ehm... ashamed (NOT for the spirit and the plot, but for the execution, the style... and the grammar).

Lately I had a sort of short circuit that brought me, nearly, to STOP definitively to write. Why?

My muse wasn't finding the food she needed to.

The more I write, the more I WANT to improve (or I hope so), analyzing and pondering everything. The more I analyze and the more I ponder on things, the more I become strict to my stories. The more I become strict to my stories, the more I become strict to other stories. The more I become strict to other stories the more I can't enjoy them. The more I can't enjoy them, the more my muse... starves, LOL. And if my muse starves... I suffer, 'cause I NEED her. But I don't know HOW to give her something good.

Besides, I've a weird way to read a story: I focuse more on FEELINGS, on EMOTIONS; I read with my heart, first, and then with my brain. It's the same when I watch a movie, or a I read a book: it enters me through the emotional channel more than through the "rational" channel. So, the FIRST thing that hit me, in a story, is not the grammar and the plot... but the "heart" and emotions that it can give me because of characterizations, sense and feelings in it... THEN I ponder on plot, grammar (uh.. I'm italian, I can't judge english's grammar, anyway, LOL) and style. No matter how the plot is good and the grammar is correct, but if I don't FEEL anything positive, if I don't FEEL the story can give me good emotions, if I don't FEEL the story adhering to canon characters (so, breaking MY illusion, the illusion I use to write MY stories), ... I have to give up.

Obviously, feelings and emotions are really subjective, and difficult to explain. It's more easy to explain a plot hole, or a grammar's error, even an OOCness... a LOT more difficult explain a bad feeling (because of a hyper-sensitivity, a taste, a different idea, or a lot of other things).

And I use the emotional channel to write, too: a reader, some time ago, told me that she saw the heart in my story, the story was very sweet and showed characters' personalities of the original show, even if it needed to be proofread; well, she was RIGHT So, now, I'm trying to keep that heart alive, proofreading those old stories.

My muse, NOW, has to be content with this re-writing, 'cause, actually, I can't feed her with anything else than MY illusion and MY heart.

I'm curious to know how people read and write stories. Heart? Brain?

How do you decide "this is good" or "this is bad"? How much are emotions important to you? Or is it only the plot and the style to attract you? When do you feel your illusion is broken?

"Keeping alive an illusion": it's definitively what I think bring people to write and read FANfic (a different realm from "original fic").

[Val Strate]

I know when I wrote with Valerie it was like music, the story would flow from my heart and my mind. Many times when she was writing with another muse in an emotionally charged moment my body would sometimes shake. Sometimes I would cry at some of the scenes wrote. When music was combined with writing, it felt like art, like painting in my mind. My point is... it's been so long since I wrote like that. There was a time I could write such emotion on my own and it's not that I can't do it anymore, I'm sure I can. It's just that, I haven't made time for such writing and now I find a lot of my emotions are reserved for my life. I find myself reserving emotions for my husband, my parents, people at church and my job, and honestly it can be overwhelming. To release into a muse may not work the same way it did when I was a student in college. I feel like I have to have a different angle to work with Valerie, but I haven't found what that was, and I miss the intensity of writing that I use to have when I was writing in college.

Lately, I have pondered that angle. I have even made an attempt to re-direct with Valerie and write with "Pines and Principals". I often wonder if that is a vain attempt or if I can keep going. I do have thoughts to progress the story; I just haven't 'connected all the dots' yet. Muses are speaking now whether I can listen and can produce is another thing.

[JadedPhoenixBurning]

Writing styles and responses to muses evolve over time. Of course you won't be able to write as you did back in college. You have evolved too even if you haven't noticed. You have to find a way to meld the changes in both you and your muse to be able to hold on to her once you've moved from one stage of your life to another.

[i1976]

I know when I wrote with Valerie it was like music, the story would flow from my heart and my mind. Many times when she was writing with another muse in an emotionally charged moment my body would sometimes shake. Sometimes I would cry at some of the scenes wrote. When music was combined with writing, it felt like art, like painting in my mind. My point is... it's been so long since I wrote like that. There was a time I could write such emotion on my own and it's not that I can't do it anymore, I'm sure I can. It's just that, I haven't made time for such writing and now I find a lot of my emotions are reserved for my life. I find myself reserving emotions for my husband, my parents, people at church and my job, and honestly it can be overwhelming. To release into a muse may not work the same way it did when I was a student in college. I feel like I have to have a different angle to work with Valerie, but I haven't found what that was, and I miss the intensity of writing that I use to have when I was writing in college.

Lately, I have pondered that angle. I have even made an attempt to re-direct with Valerie and write with "Pines and Principals". I often wonder if that is a vain attempt or if I can keep going. I do have thoughts to progress the story; I just haven't 'connected all the dots' yet. Muses are speaking now whether I can listen and can produce is another thing.

You've touched me 'bout your way to write. If you wrote that way, it's IMPOSSIBLE nothing's left.

I don't think there's a limit to emotions: you can have emotions for your family, people at church, job... and writing too, a small niche oly for yourself. TIME is the big problem, I think.

Writing for me is a sort of "relief's valve": it happens, sometimes, due to my job, I have no much time to write, and when I have to slow down my writing, I feel nervous, so I HAVE to find MY time. But I don't have a husband... maybe, if I had an husband, I'd find less time to write,

'Bout the muse: she changes. It's obvious: you grow old, and your muse change with you. It's not easy to understand the right path to follow, a good balance between the external world and the internal one.

Lately I've had a big crisis: I started to wonder WHY I write, and if it's not all a waste of time, 'cause, yeah, I need a LOT of time to write, my free time, so I started to wonder if it was better to use my free time with something more useful. I tried to stop, but... it didn't work, my muse called me back. I tried to erase everything from my mind (ideas, plots, emotions), but it didn't work. A vain fight.

Besides, I've understood I'm more happy when I write, I enjoy life, job and friends more when I write, whereas if I force myself to "choke" my imaginative and big inner world , thinking it's better to live totally in the outer world, I can't enjoy this outer world: I have to feed and take care of my inner world in order to live well in the outer one.

I've never been totally and olny the outer world, , and I've always felt it was weird and strange, but now I've accepted my muse, my emotional setting, and my being so dreamy and imaginative.

[JadedPhoenixBurning]

I usually don't allow my emotions free rein in my writing. Mainly because I don't allow them much in my day to day life either; a form of a defense mechanism due to issues of the past. However, my current chapter that I'm writing deals with things that were very close to home and as a result, I could only write a few sentences at a time before not being able to continue for a while.

For me, while I can invoke emotions in the readers, I don't permit myself to feel them typically since doing so is too draining to write. For those that write by emotions, this may seem odd but it is how I have learned that I MUST write. If I allow the terror, fear, anxiousness, anger or any of the other emotions that I cause my characters/readers to feel to seep into myself then I'd never finish anything. I know that eventually I’ll have to find a balance between writing/reading the emotions and feeling them on a not so personal level but for now, I know that I’ll either be on one extreme or the other and for my own sake, I choose to be on the side that is easier on my own emotional well-being. I’d hate to end up in therapy just because I couldn’t detach myself from the writing. LOL!!

[i1976]

I usually don't allow my emotions free rein in my writing. Mainly because I don't allow them much in my day to day life either; a form of a defense mechanism due to issues of the past.

If I allow the terror, fear, anxiousness, anger or any of the other emotions that I cause my characters/readers to feel to seep into myself then I'd never finish anything. I know that eventually I’ll have to find a balance between writing/reading the emotions and feeling them on a not so personal level but for now, I know that I’ll either be on one extreme or the other and for my own sake, I choose to be on the side that is easier on my own emotional well-being. I’d hate to end up in therapy just because I couldn’t detach myself from the writing. LOL!!

Uh, well, using emotions as you write it doesn't mean to FEEL everything your characters feel (OMG, it'll be scaring... especially thinking of my last fic). In effect, as I write, I feel good emotions even if I'm writing something sad. Strange. Maybe 'cause, even when I write something sad or painful, my attempt is to give readers (and ME) something good along the lines (balancing out the pain with something more positive here and there, for me and for the reader).

Anyway, beside plot and grammar, I judge stories into two kind of stories:

- stories that gave me good emotions. Good stories for me.

- stories that gave me bad emotions or nothing. Bad stories for me.

Why and how stories give me good or bad emotions is a mystery, anyway, LOL. It's really personal: I like some things, whereas I'm disgusted and scared away by other ones. I'm really emotional even in real life (even if I usually hide my emotions).

Then, after the "emotional judging", I focus on plot, style, good characterization or OOCness, phsychological develop and reliability (I LOVE to dig into characters' mind; I'm the kind of reader that miss the action scenes or the plot, sometimes, to focus ONLY on the psychological thing, , and maybe it's why I'm so empathic, sometimes), and so on.

Anyway, I think ANY writer writes to feel something good.

[Brian Coltrane]

Val is not forgotten.....

Speaking purely from the muse perspective: writing is passion. Yes, you should have the courage to bleed all over the page. Emotions are raw. Don't hold back. If you dare to follow your muse through darkness and light, you will be taken on unexpected, uncharted journeys through the human soul.

I grieve that muse-wise, there has been a dormancy too long in my own writing.

The irony? I now write for a living in real life, but it's all business crap. Just imagine, half of your brain prattling on about real estate statistics and interest rates and the other half is having a car chase and a shootout. But you only have time for one, and the one that pays the bills wins out.

Val, I can tell you, you have not changed. Outer circumstances may change, but the depth of feeling, drama, love, passion, angst, hate, peace and violence...whatever your muse/characters carry within them, it's still there. Just as raw, and pure, and powerful since the day it was minted.

Someday I'll prove it to you.

[RogerDuke]

The irony? I now write for a living in real life, but it's all business crap. Just imagine, half of your brain prattling on about real estate statistics and interest rates and the other half is having a car chase and a shootout. :

Hey Brian, maybe you should start a RP and pretend you're a reporter for the Hazzard Gazzette. The economy crashing and recovering, then crashing and recovering again reminds me of the way cars crash and recover, crash and recover in Hazzard County.

You could hone those skills on the RP and then apply them to our troubled economy.

With your skills in the business world there would be three guys credited with the latest recovery, Ben Bernacke, Tim Geitner and yourself. It sounds like a sequel to Dukes of Hazzard. We'll call you Cooter of Wall Street. Politicians and corporations crash it, Cooter of Wall Street fixes it.

[Brian Coltrane]

Gah! I think I'll leave the Hazzard economy to Boss Hogg. He's much more qualified at the local level.

Besides, I really need a car chase. Or...somethin'!

[Val Strate]

For the Muses... You know who you are

Wild Horses by The Rolling Stones

Childhood living is easy to do

The things you wanted I bought them for you

Graceless lady you know who I am

You know I can't let you slide through my hands

Wild horses, couldn't drag me away

Wild wild horses couldn't drag me away

I watched you suffer a dull aching pain

Now you decided to show me the same

No sweeping exits or off stage lines

Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind

Wild horses, couldn't drag me away

Wild wild horses couldn't drag me away

I know I've dreamed you a sin and a lie

I have my freedom but I don't have much time

Faith has been broken tears must be cried

Let's do some living after we die

Wild horses, couldn't drag me away

Wild wild horses we'll ride them someday

Wild horses, couldn't drag me away

Wild wild horses we'll ride them someday