That Fickle Muse

My muse has a mind of her (or is it his?) own. I’ve been spending this year working on the draft of a novel I wrote in early 2019. This book is in a different genre, in other words, not primarily a mystery, that I plan on publishing under a pen name. (That explains all my vague comments about what I’m doing, in case you’ve been curious.) Because it’s new, I’ve been studying tropes and hooks and such that are used in the genre with the plan of doing a serious rewrite to meet reader expectations before moving ahead with it.

First up was getting to know the main characters better so I could write deeper than a mystery requires. Monday, I worked on the hero. That went really well, and so I decided next up was the female lead character.

But as I pulled out the character worksheets to work on, Titus and Elisabeth kept intruding into my thoughts. I kept thinking about them instead of Adam and Eve (not the real character names) and what’s going on with them while I haven’t been paying attention to Shipwreck Point. As I delved into that, my muse kept asking questions, to which I had to figure out the answers. And thinking about what that meant for their story.

I wound up spending an hour making notes in the Scrivener project about the next book in that series, and was really drawn in as to what that meant for the series. I’m really excited about getting started on the next Shipwreck Point book!

But, alas, I’m afraid that will have to wait its turn, because I’ve waited too long already to finish up my secret project.

Do you think if I promise my muse a box of chocolates she’ll cooperate?