Got any good muse?

By Gayle Carline

I recently spent a couple of Saturdays meeting the public and hand-selling my books. I do a few of these gigs every year, where I have a table of books and promotional materials, and spend several hours signing books and talking to everyone. My table typically looks like this:

The tiara is optional.

 

These guys are always present.

 

Booker (l), Hatch (r)

 

I bought them originally because they are part of my first mystery, Freezer Burn. One day, someone asked me who they were and I said, “They’re my muses. The one with the book is Booker. He reminds me to always write well. The other one is Hatch. He says if I don’t sit my tush down in the chair and write, he’s going to use his axe to start chopping fingers.”

 

Here’s the thing: it’s a total lie. Gnomes are not my muses.

 

This is my muse:

Me and Frostie (aka, One Zip in Time)

 

When I was little, my favorite activity was to take a big sheet of paper and my pencils and crayons, and draw a picture that told a story. The drawing would start small, as a house with a tree and a girl. Then as I told the story, more things got added, from cities to dragons to horses to fighter jets — sue me, I had an imagination. What my visual-arts-centric family saw was an artist.

 

What I see now is that I wanted to be a storyteller.

 

I also loved horses, but like storytelling, it wasn’t encouraged. Instead, I was sent down the road of painting and "safer pets," like canaries.

 

Fast forward a few (okay, a lot of) years. The storytelling bug was nipping at my heels, so I told my hubby I might want to write. He bought me a laptop. I started many, many, MANY stories.

 

I finished the Christmas letter.

 

Fast forward a few more (this time I’m serious) years. Hubby knew I’ve always wanted to learn to ride a horse, so he bought me horseback riding lessons. I took lessons for about six months, started showing my trainer’s champion trail horse, then a year later purchased the sweetie in the picture above.

 

When I bought her, a lock was broken in my spirit and I started writing. I began with articles that ended up getting me a paying gig with Riding Magazine. With that boost in confidence, I asked for a column in my local newspaper. After I got that, I started writing fiction.

 

Getting to know my little red mare has taught me about myself. She can be spooky (we tease that she sees dead people), and knowing I can calm a 1,000-lb animal has given me confidence. When I first started riding her, I admit I was frightened, but it taught me that I was too stubborn to quit. Standing in the arena with her, letting her rest her head against my arm, I learned how to let my mind alone and be in the moment.

 

It is a simple thing to say, but perhaps a difficult thing to understand. A horse enabled me to write.

SO...

 

Who is your muse, and what do they give you?

Once upon a time

A long time ago, before I was a writer or a software engineer or a dancer or a flying angel or a horsewoman…

I was an artist.

It was destiny, in a family of people who drew and painted and sculpted, that I follow suit. My uncle actually made his living as an artist (eventually - after spending years working in an advertising agency). He has since passed on, but you can see some of his works here. As I was the first child, first grandchild, and first great-grandchild, the heat was on for me to fill my uncle's shoes. I was the Chosen One.

Except that my favorite thing to do was doodle. I didn't want to study line and work with light and shadow and color. I wanted to take a big sheet of paper and start in one corner with my crayons and pencils, and tell a story.

"Once upon a time," I'd say to myself, then start drawing. It might be a house that would hold a family and they would go on an adventure. Or maybe it was an airplane flying over some distant island and the tale would be about mermaids in the ocean and volcanoes and parachutes. Most of the time, there were animals. A forest of lions and deer and monkeys. The Great Plains, teeming with mustangs, all charging forward with long, waving manes and flying tails.

By the time I was finished, my "artwork" was a patchwork of scenes. They were fairly well drawn, with good perspective. But taken as a whole, it was a hot mess.

Nevertheless, I persisted in my art, spending a year at college as an art major, before I figured out that a) I didn't want to pursue art in the same vein as my family, and b) if I didn't get out of my parents' house soon, someone would have to die. So I dropped out of school and burst from my folks' house in a fit of marriage. Which is a story for another day.

Why am I telling you this story?

I've mentioned before that my first novel was plotted out on an Excel spreadsheet, with all of the characters and clues and a steady timeline lain out. My second novel started life in Excel, but I was never really happy with the plot points, so I went rogue and just started making stuff up. I say that very casually. What I did was open every scene with "Who is in this scene? What do they want? What obstacle can I throw at them to keep them from reaching their goal?" I am, by the way, amazed at the writers who always use the seat-of-the-pants approach. How do they know where the story is going to arc? How can they tell when they're done?

Now I'm writing the third mystery. As usual, I need to know what happened, then figure out how my character solves the case. I started with the Excel and got confused because there were a lot of new people running around in my head. Then I went to journaling these strangers and realized I could spend years writing everyone's diary. I needed to find a way to blend these actions or I'd never get the book written.

A blank piece of paper told me what to do. I sat down on the carpet, picked up a pencil and started in the corner. "Once there was a house on fire and a boy trapped inside. The house belonged to a man who had a lot of Dean Martin things. He was very sad when his things burned."

See? I'm a doodler

I wasn't drawing houses in flames, this time. There are lots of words and circles and lines with arrows going here and there and it looks like a hot mess to anyone who doesn't know what the book is about. But now I know what it's about.

If you'll excuse me, I've got some writing to do.

P.S. I'd show you my "storyboard" but I don't want to give away any spoilers.