Working with a Make-believe Muse

Writers and other creatives often have real or imaginary muses that help them make beautiful art.  Susanne had a make-believe muse - Lazy Larry - and he isn't always a writer's dream assistant.  

Listen to this hilarious account of her time spent with inspirational "Larry". 

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Happy to Be Canadian Podcast. I'm Suzanne Spence Wilkins, a writer who lives in rural southwestern Ontario, Canada. Each week I share an original, very short story that will have you laughing and reflecting on the simple moments of our lives. Now, on to today's episode. Happy to be Canadian, episode 63. Working with a make-believe muse. Sometimes, like this week, a story won't come together. I started early in the week with an idea and began typing it many times. I set my 10-minute timer which helps me focus, but the words sputtered. In spite of choosing a topic that is deep set in my heart, I couldn't get the sentences to form a cohesive thought. I knew where I wanted to take you, dear reader, but the word map had been torn in half and I drove off a cliff. By Friday evening, I knew I was in trouble with my midnight deadline looming. I went to my other computer and started digging through old files to see if I had written about this topic before. Maybe I could cobble together something with my recent thoughts. No luck. What I did find was a story about my make-believe writing muse that I had crafted a few years ago for my writing group. It summed up this writing week. Writing is not easy. Words don't just flow from brain to page. We writers must have some type of divine intervention to help us. For some reason, the writing gods sent Larry to inspire me when all seems lost. Let me tell you about him. Lazy Larry is my muse. In the mornings when I commit to writing three sheets of inspiration or dog girl, I slide out of bed early. Larry humps and fumps and burrows into the blankets like a groundhog avoiding spring. I face my pages alone. Sometimes when I'm writing in mid-afternoon, he flops onto the couch, with his shoes still on, and pulls a small-sized fluffy Super Mario throw over his feet and up to his belly. I know he eats chocolate there, licks his fingers, and wipes them on Mario's red cap. Other times when a deadline is approaching, I see him loitering on the porch, leaning on the railing, hiding in the shadows. If I ask him, What are you doing, Larry? Nothing. You don't have to tell me that. I turn to look at a blank computer screen. When we're working, Larry wears grey sweatpants that are a little too tight, but still loose around the ankles. I have caught him looking in the mirror with his t-shirt tied up under his chest, his midra, his middle-aged midra showing. And he smiled at his reflection. Larry doesn't wear a hat in the office, not because of manners. He worries that it will stifle his creativity and wear a ring into his blonde mullet. Once when we were nearing completion of a critical chapter, I saw him bend over to pick up a stray, long, straight hair off the floor. He didn't squat. He just bent at the hips like a rag doll. His gray sweatpants stayed stationary in space so that his butt crack was exposed to me. Larry farted, stood up, and walked by me as if I wasn't there. And I thought, oh Lord, why did I settle for this muse? Every once in a while, Larry will show up at 5 30 p.m. on a Tuesday and spring a great idea on me. I will write wildly for 15 minutes and turn out a passable story for my writers' group at six. Larry will be pleased with himself. I think mediocre might be the best he can do. But then he'll surprise me. Let's get dolled up and go out on the town, he'll say. Then he'll put on his brushed cottonclad shirt that squares up his shoulders, tuck the tails into his jeans, and buckle up like a rodeo cowboy. He'll snap his suspenders and say, Let's go, girl. Yes, he wears suspenders with a belt. Can't be too careful, he says. And out we go. Me with my nouns and verbs tucked into my clutch purse, and Larry with adverbs, adjectives, and ideas bulging from his wallet. We will tell tales to the men at the bar and make up stories for the kids in the playground. We will recreate our families, friends, and foes. We will turn sunsets into poems and parables into fiction. Characters and climaxes, scenes and sentences will roll off our tongues until dawn. We will walk home along the beach, and Larry will carry me, singing a song from my youth. The next day, Larry will be peeling carrots at the sink. Damn! He will throw down the peeler and suck his bleeding index finger. He will ask me to get him a bandage. I won't be able to write for a month, he will say. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Happy2Be Canadian. If you would like to receive an email each Saturday morning that features new short stories and more, you can sign up on my website, www.crazy8barn.com. If you would like to meet me in person and discover another way that we tell our rural stories, please join me at a barn quilt painting workshop at our beautiful eight-sided barn in Palmyra, Ontario, along the North Shore of Lake Erie. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Crazy8 Barn. If you are an Apple podcast listener and enjoyed this podcast, I would appreciate it if you could leave me a favorable review. And that lets Apple know that Happy to Be Canadian is a valuable podcast and it shares it with other potential listeners. I'm Suzanne Spence Wilkins, and I'm Happy to Be Canadian.