Return Of The Muse - Writing Again

I kind of thought it was gone, as in gone forever. The muse, the undefinable upwelling of creativity that had led to me writing my great epic fantasy series (ha, ha, I mean if I don't think it is 'great' who will?).

It all started in 2014. I had just settled into my transitioned state with us getting into our wild Eldership world travel mode. There was time to do something. I looked at a book I had written in my late 20's when I was big time into sci fi and fantasy. I felt I could do something with it. And them it hit, the muse. Suddenly, the entire framework of a much greater creation came out. Not just came out. It DEMANDED to be written. Between 2014 and 2016, I could barely stop writing. I put down over 1,500 pages in four books during that period. And I completed the cycle of the story. 

But I still felt a desire to write. I had tested the waters on getting published by sending my some of my work to an agent. The response was 'there is potential but you are going to have to make a lot of changes.' I went deep within. This sounded like getting a job. Besides what the agent suggested I needed to change went against the values, emotions, and feelings I wanted to portray. Besides, my real motivation for writing was I wanted a story where IT ALWAYS TURNED OUT THE WAY I WANTED IT! Nothing else I've ever read does. They are always killing off the character I love, or having them not get the woman I want them to, or any of a number of things that piss me off about reading or watching others' stories. 

I made the decision that I was writing for an audience of one - me. I thought through how to extend the story and started on the fifth book. This one came out much slower. There wasn't this almost same coming from another place aspect. Between 2016 and 2019 I finished this fifth book and another 400+ pages of writing. Now I'd written over 2,000 pages, all following the same fantasy world and general story line. 

In 2019, I started Book Six...and creativity came to a screeching halt after about a hundred pages. I suspect my throwing all my creative energies into Theodora had a lot to do with it. Occasionally I would go back and write a some tortuous pages. But the big problem was I couldn't see where the story was going. In many ways I had written myself into a box canyon because of a insidious tendency to have my villains redeem themselves. Well if you keep doing this, you run out of villains. No villains, no tension/conflict and no story. So I put Book Six on hold and didn't really look at it for a number of years.

Then earlier this year, I realized, I had Theodora to a point where it didn't need anywhere near the energy I had had to put into it. So I went back to the book. I figured out a way to create a new villain, and damn it an nonredeemable one! And suddenly the creative juices began to flow. The muse was back. I outlined a massive amount of story in just a few weeks. I don't feel that same pressure to 'get it out of my head' as I had in 2014-16. But each night I am cranking out a couple of pages. 

And it is fun.