Writing Block Corner: the muse

Hello Bookworms!
Today I am doing another writing block corner. It seems that those are actually mildly helpful for people! Today I am talking about the ever present, ever invasive: muse. This is a term which has been used by several people, and I'm not sure who first coined it for writing, but it was a Grecian mythological creature. The teller of tales. The inspiration for writing. So, I have labeled the insane inspiration which comes to me and tells me to write: my muse. I have a different muse per each book. Sometimes the muse has the same name as the book. Sometimes it really doesn't. Anyway, on to my advice!

The muse is the foundation and the downfall of a writer. It will give you ideas, show you how things will happen, and be a great friend. It will also annoy you to death while you're trying to focus on anything else. As far as I can tell, the muse goes through several stages, in no particular order:
1: Awake.
This is the peaceful muse, who will give you story ideas when you ask for them, and will leave you alone for the most part otherwise. If this is the state your muse is in: you're new to writing. Don't get used to it, it won't last.
2: Comatose.
Your muse hasn't talked to you in a while. It hasn't given you anything to work with for a couple of months. Your muse is asleep, indefinitely. This muse is rather commonly misdiagnosed as writer's block. In my experience writer's block is when all of your muses go on strike, but I'll get to multiple muses later. The comatose muse will wake up when it wakes up. Leave it alone and go find another muse to talk to.
3: Sleepy.
Maybe your muse has just woken up. Or, maybe your muse has been awake for a while, and wants to go to sleep. It will give you an idea here or there, and for the most part will leave you alone, but it won't care when it talks to you. If you are trying to talk to it, it will be testy and make little shooing motions at you. If you are busy doing something else, it will collapse on you, and spout out some random piece of information, maybe two or three, then leave you alone. This muse is trying to decide whether or not to go get coffee, or go to sleep.
4: Caffeinated.
This muse is awake, it knows it, and now you know it. It will give you story ideas on Pinterest, while you're at your desk, while you're writing, while you're taking notes on something, while you're cooking. It will take a lot for this muse to leave you alone. The muse has found its coffee. It will probably make you write a whole chapter in one day, then maybe leave you alone for a week or two, maybe even a month or two if you're lucky.
5: Highly Caffeinated.
If the previous muse had coffee, this one just got about 10 shots of espresso. This muse will not leave you alone. This muse will refuse to let you sleep. This muse will keep you up at night, wake you in the morning, and pester you through the day. The caffeinated muse could write a chapter in one day. This muse will write two in one day, then come back and pester you to do the same thing tomorrow. You cannot work, you cannot sleep, you can barely eat without the muse yanking on your shoulders, pulling you back to the desk. This muse is impossible to deal with. Find something to act as a sleeping pill for the muse, and get it to shut up.
6: Napping.
This muse state usually goes along rather well with the caffeinated muse. After your muse has made you write about a chapter or two, it will decide that it needs time to think, and so will take a nap for a few days, maybe even a week or two. This is a nice break. While it is napping, you can catch up on all the normal life things you could have been doing while your muse decided to nag your ear off about writing.
7: Stubborn.
This muse is awake, it knows it, and it doesn't like you. Everything you see makes you think: Oh! This would go great in the story! And every time you go to write your muse turns its head, shakes it deliberately, and gives you the ultimate silent treatment. This muse is temperamental, and should change in a few days to a week or so.
8: Dead.
Yup. This muse is dead. It's gone, it won't be coming back. The story has died, and there's nothing you can do about it. This state usually occurs after you have found plot hole after plot hole, and the story no longer seems worth writing. The story hasn't been worked on for at least a year or two, and there's nothing there. You have no ideas. The characters have abandoned you, and you can't change it. Goodbye muse.
9: Ghost.
The dead muse has come back. It gave you a random story idea, and suddenly there's something there. But, like every ghost, it won't stay still long enough for you to see it. This muse will hover about your shoulders, whispering random ideas into your head, and waiting till it drives you mad. Mad enough to pick up the pen and start writing it again.
10. Zombie. (Contributed by Esther.)
This dead muse comes back in the form of letting its characters invade other stories. Sometimes, believe it or not, a zombie muse can be a good thing. Most of the time it just tries to take over the planet and makes a mess of a perfectly decent storyline. Beware of the zombie muse.

This is just my experience with muses. Do any of you other writers out there have different experiences with muses? What terms have you come up with to describe your inspiration? How have you coped? I've found that there are triggers for what makes my muses change temperaments, but I can't figure out what the triggers are. Anyway, please let me know if this helped!
Scribe ergo quae vidiste vivere!

Shady Friday #21

Hello Bookworms!
Two posts in one week? Shall I jinx myself by saying: I'm getting back to blogging? Yup. Jinxed myself. Oh well, I'll still try to keep up with the blog!
Today's Shady Friday is from Mildly Normal Insanity. (If any of you can think of a better title, I'm all ears!) So, my book woke up big time. It has several P.O.V.s, (Point of Views, as a friend of mine pointed out that she didn't know what I was talking about when I said that!) and Athena, due to the nature of her insanity, now sees the world in 3rd person. However, Eros, (who has a VERY important role in the book) is now speaking in 2nd person. Or at least his P.O.V. is in 2nd person. I'm still working on him. He's crazy. Anyway, back to the story at hand. A lot is going on, and I can't explain much, but here's a scene. This particular scene is told from the perspective of Hades. (Hades is a good guy in this. Yes, that's spoilers, but in the original mythos he was a perfectly normal person. Well, perfectly normal god.)
I don't think you need to understand too much about the plot other than the fact that Aph. is short for Aphrodite, Ode is short for Odysseus, and Poison is short for Poseidon. Have fun reading!
~
 Aph. had some difficulties talking about the zombies after that. I can’t really blame her, they looked so human. It was like looking at the last twinges of an animal our cats brought in at the farm. It was clearly gone beyond all help, but it still looked so pitiful. You wanted to reach out and help it, it looked so damaged. But trying to help wouldn’t do any good, and if the thing had rabies, or in this case a dangerous neural anti-agent, you could get seriously hurt. Then again, with the topic they had changed to, getting hurt was likely to happen anyway.

“What about you, Ode? Did you have any family?” I shuddered, not wanting to remember mine. Not remember my parents, my brothers, my sister.

“I had a girl back home, actually.” Ode replied, leaning back. A part of me was curious, and another part realized what a dangerous path this was. Talking about what could never be again, that was tricky ground to cover. “She was something else.” Ode smiled as he thought of her. I wondered what she looked like. Where was she from? Was she an American, or was she from oversees? Had she had a simple job before this, like waitress or secretary? Or was she something exciting? Had she served with him in the military? Had she been a secret agent?

“What happened to her?” I asked, despite myself.

Ode just smiled. “I don’t know. And for that I’m glad. She was developing early onset Alzheimer’s when I left for my last tour. Then this happened. I can only hope that she made it out alive, but that’s better than knowing otherwise. I’ll never know, and right now I think it’s better to believe a good lie than know a tragic truth. It won’t make a difference one way or the other.”

“Alzheimer’s? How old are you?” Asked Poison.

Ode laughed. “56, why? How old do I look to you?”

I gaped. “You’ve given over half your life to the military?!”

Ode smiled at me. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Yup. Joined up in ’83. Got my degree while serving. Met her there too. Penelope was her name, but we just called her Nelly. I fell in love the day I met her.” He sat forward. “’course it took longer for her to feel the same way ‘bout me. But once she did, well…” His smile grew fond, and I could tell the rest of the conversation was carrying on in his head. I still couldn’t shake it. All the way out here, there were still people who held to their convictions. Their morality. Their love. Maybe, if Ode could find a way to make it, then so could we. 

~

So? Thoughts? Some of my characters are still sorting themselves out, and some I know where they're going. I'm trying to not include too much that will probably get changed, but this is a brief example of what I've got at the moment. I have a few more posts in my head to get out, so I'll be working on those! 

Scribe ergo quae vidiste vivere! 

Writing Block Corner: Villains

Hello Bookworms!
So, a friend of mine actually requested that I do another writing block corner, so here I am! Today I'm covering a little something I've learned about villains. This isn't applicable to everything, but it's something to keep in mind while writing whoever ends up being the antagonist of your story.

There's a saying: a hero is only as good as his villain is evil. I think I can expound upon that. Well-written antagonists tend to be almost a flipped-coin version of the protagonist. They have gone through similar experiences to that of the protagonist, or they have similar goals, or they care about people the same way. They have to relate to each other in such a way that makes you realize that the hero could very easily become the villain. If the hero had taken a different path, or if different people had been in his life, then he would have been just like the villain. Possibly worse. That's what makes it an interesting story: seeing the dynamic of what could have been, and what prevented it. Seeing how thin of a line there actually is between hero and villain. What makes an amazingly sympathetic villain however, is seeing that in the same circumstances, we ourselves as the audience could be just like the villain. But there's a fine line between making the circumstances understandable, and excusing them. Horrible actions are still horrible, you just have to know where the blame actually lies, and make sure the characters reflect that. Finally, some of your villains might be totally not understandable at all. There are some great, crazy villains who don't have any sympathy whatsoever. (Examples: Moriarty. Need I say more?) If you know what you're going for in a villain, great. Have fun writing your first draft. If you don't though, try looking at your hero. Find what makes him or her the hero. What if they didn't have that? What if they were almost exactly the same, but they didn't have that one thing? What would be different? Would they become something terrifying? Show the audience. And show yourself.

Ok, so was this helpful? Please let me know! And if you have any requests, please let me know! I actually have a few ideas, so we'll see how this goes!
Scribe ergo quae vidiste vivere!

Writing block corner, cliches.

Hello Bookworms!
Ok, so a friend of mine recently started writing, and so I decided now would be a great time to share some of my 'gathered knowledge about writing'. I'm sure that to some of you this is all going to be stuff you already know, but to others this might prove really helpful. So, if you think your story has cliches, please read! And let me know if this was helpful!

Alright, so there are several things about writing cliches that should probably be mentioned. First: Cliches are Cliches for a reason! I know this might not make sense at first, but the reason something is a cliche is because it is so overused. The reason that it's overused? Because it's actually a really good plot point! But people have used it so much that it has become predictable. So, if you are going to write something cliche, just know that it's cliche going in. Don't expect to surprise your audience with it. You don't have to write something that the audience has never read, you don't even have to make them think that they've never read it before. Your job as the writer is simply to make them not care that they've heard it before because your work is so entertaining. I didn't come up with this myself. I got it from a fellow writer, who got it from someone else. I'm not that smart.

Secondly: if you can, point out the cliches. This can be expanded to an even better principle: have a mediator character. SO many movies and TV shows these days lose audiences because there's no one for the audience to truly relate to. No one is saying what the audience is saying, and they can't find someone who feels exactly what they feel. There's no emotional connection to these characters, and as such the audience has no reason to stick around. Now, pulling it back to what I was originally saying, have your mediator character point out the cliches. Yes, there is nothing wrong with using cliches. But if your audience can say mid-sentence: "That's such a cliche!" then you should probably have on of your characters be able to say it too. Unless it's a terribly stressful scene, but you have to be careful. If the audience knows where it's going, then their tension will already be decreased. It's a fine line, and I don't know everything there is to know about it.

Third, (and last): put your own twist on it. If you're writing a cliche, then you might end up boring yourself. Throw something random in that you didn't see coming. Remember: second drafts are when you go back through and make all the random, crazy out-of-nowhere stuff have some degree of foreshadowing. Have fun with it! Your audience your first time round is yourself. Remember: "The first draft is just you telling yourself the story." (Terry Prachett.) It's from a pin I found on Pinterest, I honestly have no idea who this person is. Still, it's a good thing to keep in mind. So, have fun writing!

Alright, would you as my audience like for me to write more advice based upon the advice of my fellow writers in my community and the limited experience I have? And if there's something else you would like for me to write about, please let me know!
Scribe ergo quae vidiste vivere!