Drive-By Writing

If you're a writer, you are probably familiar with the tendency to try to write ideas down while driving. I seem to get my best ideas when I'm driving, and it's the most inopportune moment to do it. Surprisingly, I don't always have a pen handy. That's why I bought one of those key chain attachable sharpie markers...

But then there's not always paper. I know this sounds crazy for a voluminous writer like myself not to have paper and pen....there were times when an idea was so good, I considered to pricking my finger and writing it in blood. That would be a blood-blog.

Today, for example, I was writing not only on envelope, but on the back of the cardboard box the envelopes came in. And periodically honking the horn, because I was using my steering wheel as a desk.
It got so that every time I thought of something, I felt it might be prudent to just pull over. But with all the ideas I had today, I would have never reached my destination....which, paradoxically, was the office supply store to buy pens and paper.

Then, when I got home, I was burdened with the challenge of deciphering what looks like hieroglyphs on the cardboard.

Years ago, when I did quite a bit more driving than I do now, I used to use a tape recorder. I suppose I'll have to go back to that. Writing things down is just too frustrating, and things I intend to save may be lost because I can't read it. Never mind the lives I might endanger.

I can see the headlines now:
Local Author Burns a Swath Through the Median while Honoring Her Muse.

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For more of those ideas I had while driving, see Remote Control Yourself and Texting, Texting, One Two, 9...Oops at my other blog.

Drive-By Writing

Used by the Muse

image Clowns With Ice Cream (C)KJB

Used by the Muse

aren't we vessels, after all?
don't we pretend to be God-you're-Talented
when really we are only functional?

The harsh truth is:
our best work is the work of another-
perhaps another greater consciousness, yes
but of another

and credit is left
flapping in the creative wind
on the bulletin board
of universal notoriety

and we are only functional

dammit.

Creative people understand that there is a source of creativity that does not seem to reside within us, but is rather originating from a place other than self. We are responsible for what we do with that idea, how we allow it to manifest, but not the idea itself. To fully comprehend this concept we must sidestep the ego. This is often the biggest challenge we face as humans. It's very much like seeing the result of something without considering the cause. If I have an interesting idea, and I write a story centered on that idea, and I receive compliments on that story, I must remain aware that even though the idea seemed to originate within some machination of my own mind, it's AUTHENTIC origination is from somewhere else. My higher consciousness? the universal consciousness? When I recognize it was actually given in some way, then I can't honestly accept all the credit. But that's what we usually understand about the process. I created it, therefore, I am worthy of the credit.
Many people throughout history have had the same idea without ever having known each other, nor had access to that idea beforehand. Is is because similar organs produce similar results? If one brain thinks of it, can another brain think of it simply by virtue of physiology? OR is there a deeper truth to be had, here? If we accept the postulate that we are all conduits for some other greater source, then we must also accept that we are part of that greater whole. We are each a smithereen in the great explosion of Oneness. We're all little "onenessess." (forgive me. Had to.)
In that sense, then, we only have control over the way in which we allow what we're given to manifest. That's the point at which the individual credit resides. I can create something ugly from that idea, or something beautiful. I can share it, or keep it to myself. This is my contribution, then. This is what makes me and everyone else unique: how we choose to manifest what we are given.
Choose wisely, friends.

Used by the Muse

Put THAT in Your Pipe

What with all the new age channeling going on, (allowing non-physical entities to speak through them) I've had to decide how I feel about it. . .because, you know, there can be nothing in my experience left misunderstood. . .

Aside from the Channels who are obvious charlatans, I believe there are some who are authentic (a truth that crosses over many boundaries and into many situations). In my endeavors to understand this phenomenon, I've had to take the beliefs I had in place and add any new beliefs I've come to; and I've come to this:

I am a channel, too. But I don't channel Abraham or Ramtha, The Enlightened One. I channel my Muse. Each time I embark upon a creative endeavor, I channel. Each time I have an inspiration, I channel. Each time I understand something on a profound level, figure out one of life's great mysteries, or make a decision at the grocery about "paper or plastic," I channel. (okay, the last one was added for levity, I don't consider my choice of grocery bags an enlightened epiphany. . .)

But I channel. And you channel. And everyone CAN channel.

When I set about creating the things I create—whether in the area of music, art, or writing, or giving a massage, or helping a friend figure some conundrum out, I am tapping in to that channel that we all have as spiritual beings, having a human experience. When I get any inspiration, it comes from SOMEWHERE. Call it inspiration or Muse or non-physical energy or collective consciousness . . . it comes from higher self—from collective unconscious, from God.

Abraham or Ramtha or just smartness from a human brain or mind. . .are all pulled from the same Source. It is often referred to, as a matter of fact, as "Source." The only difference is its manifestation; how the information presents itself. If someone is seeking and meditating, and some other consciousness appears and introduces itself or names itself, that is Source. If someone is seeking and meditating, and has the experience of epiphany, that is also source. There really is no fundamental difference, other than how it manifests itself, and in what form.

For instance, I might take a lump of clay on a potter's wheel, and make a large vase or I might also make a plate; it really depends on what the inspiration is—it's still the same clay, taking different forms. It's still Source.

If this is so, then we don't need those "middle-men"—those 'tweeners who try to make us believe that we can have nothing of God or higher consciousness without them. In other words, a priest is not a conduit to God. WE are the conduit to God. We are, in a very real sense, GOD. We all come from the same Source, the same essence, and so we are all portions of that Source, manifested in physical form, in a particular time-space continuum.

Put THAT in your pipe, and smoke it.

Put THAT in Your Pipe

My Muse Still Breathes

All authors get to a point in their writing life, where they feel they have plumbed the depths of the well the Muse provides, and begin to doubt that they have anything else to offer. This is usually a case of stagnation within the mileu of new experience. Without new input, new contrasts in our day to day lives, we can only reiterate what we have already learned.

I had reached this point a few weeks ago. I feared that the 12 books I have in print and the 2 I'm almost finished with, were to be the last. I couldn't imagine having another fresh idea, even though I had just completed an entirely fresh novel from start to finish (Baggage). This book wasn't based on anyone I knew, and it had no personal experiences in it. I want to have an equal number of mainstream books as I do "gay" ones, to increase my chances of finding a mainstream publisher or agent. So I've been trying to break away from the need to write about only gay characters. I also needed to write without the temptation of including numerous sex scenes. It can sometimes be a cop-out to do that. So Baggage had no Gay characters, none of them inspired by anyone I knew, including myself, no scenes that were based on something that happened to me or anyone else in my life. It was entirely new. So I was pleased to have accomplished that goal.

But then, as I was about to complete the other few I had not finished, it occurred to me that I had no more tidbits after that, in my writing files, from whence to nurture and develop a new story. I spent so many years writing portions of books and then putting them away, that I had plenty to work with.

The day came when I was nearing completion of all those old projects, and was faced with the impending task of creating something entirely new.

As the days wore on, I still couldn't think of anything, still couldn't find inspiration that would give me the new book. So I let go of it. Not for long, just a few days, and asked my subconscious mind each night to provide something in my sleep. Dreams have always been a rich source of material for me. From the odd short story, The House of Escher, (included in the collection, "Brainmatter") to any number of springboard scenarios that became various novels, my dreaming mind could always serve up something new and interesting.

I knew I needed to focus on other things and other people, and try to break out of my routine for awhile. I created about 7 new paintings, (Shown on left) having been inspired by the work of Russian artist, Wassily Kandinski, and watched a lot of TV and movies, and read about 3 new Koontz novels, since he has been such a mentor to me. I have studied his writing for a long time, because I wanted to understand how he managed to provide so much reading pleasure. I have actually figured out how he accomplished this on many levels, and that has been helpful to my writing in many ways. I hoped that reading him again, and getting all this other input, would stir something up.

It did.


My best friend and I had been talking about the concept of Walk-ins, and I had read some material about it out of curiosity. Then, after having headaches everyday lately, and some blurred vision, I had a tragic fantasy that my eyesight might be in danger. That led me to consider that I hadn't ever written about a blind character.


After that, I had this image in one of my dreams, of a woman standing on a precipice. She is shot in the shoulder and falls into the void. That was not a dream that was much fun to wake up from, since the woman was myself. While I suspect it was some subconscious fear that my love life has been killed by the lack of hope, and I feel I am about to descend into some romantic void, I ignored this in favor of using it for fodder.

Then, I used a method that had worked for me before: taking previous seedlings of unrelated ideas and putting them together to see what happened. It's kind of like creative cooking. You know that certain things go together, but then you throw in a few things to see if it tastes different or better.

From this collection of disparate ideas, my muse baked me something new.

I now have the seedlings for a new book, and am working on it along with completing the two novellas in progress. (Those--Quintessence and Another Justice--should be available in November). The new book, is as yet untitled, but that always reveals itself in the writing, unless I have begun with the title itself.

The blurb I have so far, concerning what the book is to be about, is:

"A non-physical walk-in soul makes an agreement with another incarnated soul to take over her body. The Walk-in, perhaps too fearless, and too hungry for the pleasures of the flesh, discovers she has inherited the life of a Morman goody-two-shoes who is live-in caregiver for two men--one blind, the other wheelchair bound.

And someone is trying to kill her."

My Muse still breathes.

My Muse Still Breathes