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Chasing Muses

Writers could spend their entire lives, pining for muses. Hours, days, years passing, in pursuit of an elusive entity to spark their imagination’s infatuation. Tasha Askew was not that sort of writer. Granted, she did spend every waking moment chasing her muses, but this wasn’t artistic posturing… Tasha’s aim was to systematically hunt down and kill — every last one of them. All of those little voices that called out to her, when her head hit the pillow, making it impossible for her to indulge a moment’s peace.

What fueled this homicidal urge? Lack of sleep. Tasha had always struggled with insomnia. In fact, it had been her inability to sleep that had encouraged her to start writing in the first place. She spent bedtime contemplating strange scenarios, and entertaining the numerous characters that had no place better to hang out, than in her head. She figured, no harm in jotting some of them down.

After finishing a story, she would finally be able to pass out. This was a delightful side-effect. The problem was, as she continued this habit, the stories multiplied in frequency, and the characters became pushier… more demanding. Now, she wasn’t only being pestered pre-slumber, it was happening at all hours of the day and night. She was lucky to sneak in a twenty minute nap. 

It occurred to her, that writers were sort of like mediums and muses were like ghosts. Once you helped one “cross over” from creative limbo into literary peace, every muse on the block wants to gab your ear off. But, as Tasha’s muses all manifested as characters, she got this crazy idea that if she could find these people — the real people that these characters were merely projections of, they were far too vivid to be wholly fictional — and put them out of their misery… maybe she could shut up the voices, in her head, for good.

Tasha buckled her utility belt, and slid her guns into their holsters. She strapped her sword to her back, and then finished applying her war paint…

Okay. So, it wasn’t the best plan. It was conceptualized in desperation, and fueled by sleep deprivation.

But…

A girl could only take so much.

comments

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  1. aquietjoy reblogged this from ordinarywonder
  2. through-the-true-colors reblogged this from sunscraps
  3. sunscraps reblogged this from ordinarywonder
  4. seussscat said: really like this!
  5. illobo said: It should be no surprise to me that when reading your work I begin to salivate with pure literary hunger, but still it nips me in the butt most of the time. You’ve enthralled me line after line, piece after piece. Brava.
  6. This was featured in #Prose
  7. bluebell-the-rabbit said: For some reason, I hope my writing gets so good that I would have these problems. I have NO MUSES at the moment but if I had so many I had to hunt them down - ugh! - it would be a perfect heaven/hell day.
  8. curlijam reblogged this from ordinarywonder
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