Summoning the Muse
It’s just past the half way mark over in Nanoland.
I’ve got myself a cosy cushion of words and presently almost aimlessly meandering down the mountain to the finish line which is almost within reach.
It has been a very strange month so far. Never have I gotten to the starting blocks with so little in the way of inspiration. Like The Beast 66 himself, this serpent's planning and preparation for this year's event was non- existent - even less than for the very first year I joined when I signed up a couple of days before the start of November.
At first I figured that I could always resurrect and expand on a super heroes project done earlier this year as part of an online course
So that was the fallback position in the event that nothing more interesting turned up in the meantime.
But it was listening to a correspondent’s report from the election in the USA and the first of the three very nasty debates that the little green light went on in this serpent’s skull.
What a perfect way to kill two birds with one stone? Snatch the Donald as the archetype for the male main character and just let him loose and see what happens. There were certainly enough pictures, videos and soundbites to get the general very nasty vibe but there still remained one very big problem. Izzie does not live in the USA and has never even visited the place. Nanowrimo is no time to try out the Turin Test - trying to pass as a native while being completely clueless about the location. Of course the Oracle of Google makes such fakery a whole lot easier but one of the many mottos in Nanoland - research is for December (except of course for those super organised folks who have been plotting and planning for months in advance)
There was no point in transplanting him to Australia and doing a rerun of our July election with him as the candidate. An assortment of cultural differences not least compulsory voting and preferential voting means that such a loose cannon would have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever getting elected assuming they could even make it past the party selection processes. We did have a Trump wannabee who possessed many of the traits of The Big Boofhead in homeopathic dilution who did win the 2013 election but was knifed by his own party for his tin ear, stupid three word slogans, grovelling stupidity as well as his astonishing ability to insult just about every minority group in the country as well as some significant majority groups such as women.
So some of the cast had been chosen but there was still the minor matter of the plot. But by then it was already November and there was a couple of decks of tarot cards to play with until the muse paid a visit with a story arc of some sort.
With still no ideas in mind it was just a matter of picking a card, any card as a prompt and writing about 100 to 200 words before going on to the next one. This would at least get the word count quota for the day and with a bit of luck some sort of story might emerge.
On the second day of November I lucked out with the Wheel of Fortune from the Bohemian Gothic deck.
The inner muse conjured images of Hillary Clinton banished to the basement of the White House where she was kept in the dungeons and forced to watch endless broadcasts of Trump Total Victory Television. Of course she is still plotting and planning the revolution outside and is feeling really peeved because Bill has fled the country but not before serving her with the papers for divorce proceedings.
Amusing but no use because it is simply too difficult to make up stuff if setting the story in the States.
But after digging up the original "The Art of the Deal" from the dusty depths of the serpent library of dark tomes, it has provided endless inspiration and ideas. Using the chapter titles and content as a structure has brought order to the chaos of tarot and Instigations inspired squiggles.
I even get to recycle the prompts concerning the guided tours of hell.
So leaving the cards aside and using the chapters and content of Tony Schwartz’s book for inspiration, it did not take long for the muses to arrive and whisper all sorts of possibilities. The most promising was a change of identity for the main character. No longer a young and ambitious real estate tycoon with visions of grandeur and world domination along with a bevy of Swedish blondes but a junior devil climbing the greasy pole in the infernal hierarchy and working his way up to fame and fortune.
Since then Mephistopheles has devoted his time to using "The Art of the Deal" as a Bible for the harvesting of ever increasing numbers of souls using devious devices such as Collateralized Demonic Obligations and other definitely dodgy derivatives . If the truth be told - he actually wrote the original text and the Donald and his ghost writer Tony Schwartz just went and plagiarized his work.
Unfortunately there is a bit of a Trump fan club in the serpent circle of friends. A few weeks ago a friend had ever so avariciously ogled my copy of the Precious and begged to be allowed to borrow it. I told her I needed it for research purposes but would be quite happy to bring it for her today when we met to catch up on all the gossip.
After making bright and colourful mind maps and using highlighters to mark the juiciest morsels for later reference and now being just short of 36,666 words, I figured it is time to share this dusty old copy of “Mein Kampf”
Only today I noticed amongst all the pretty pictures a parade devoted to celebrating the return of the Americas Cup to New York after rescuing it from those awful Aussies. Amazing that bank rolling the Australian yacht was one Alan Bond - our very own version of The Donald who also dabbled in real estate and had a penthouse on the 51st floor of what was then the tallest tower in the city.
That little nugget just has to find its way into the story especially after the penthouse was open to the public this weekend and I went for a sticky beak. More than a few of the visitors commented that Alan and Donald had so much in common.
But all is not lost. More inspiration is only just around the corner - the Trump political manifesto - “Crippled America - how to make America great again” just happens to be on the shelves of the local library and the serpent is going to snaffle it tomorrow.
I’ve got myself a cosy cushion of words and presently almost aimlessly meandering down the mountain to the finish line which is almost within reach.
It has been a very strange month so far. Never have I gotten to the starting blocks with so little in the way of inspiration. Like The Beast 66 himself, this serpent's planning and preparation for this year's event was non- existent - even less than for the very first year I joined when I signed up a couple of days before the start of November.
At first I figured that I could always resurrect and expand on a super heroes project done earlier this year as part of an online course
So that was the fallback position in the event that nothing more interesting turned up in the meantime.
But it was listening to a correspondent’s report from the election in the USA and the first of the three very nasty debates that the little green light went on in this serpent’s skull.
What a perfect way to kill two birds with one stone? Snatch the Donald as the archetype for the male main character and just let him loose and see what happens. There were certainly enough pictures, videos and soundbites to get the general very nasty vibe but there still remained one very big problem. Izzie does not live in the USA and has never even visited the place. Nanowrimo is no time to try out the Turin Test - trying to pass as a native while being completely clueless about the location. Of course the Oracle of Google makes such fakery a whole lot easier but one of the many mottos in Nanoland - research is for December (except of course for those super organised folks who have been plotting and planning for months in advance)
There was no point in transplanting him to Australia and doing a rerun of our July election with him as the candidate. An assortment of cultural differences not least compulsory voting and preferential voting means that such a loose cannon would have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever getting elected assuming they could even make it past the party selection processes. We did have a Trump wannabee who possessed many of the traits of The Big Boofhead in homeopathic dilution who did win the 2013 election but was knifed by his own party for his tin ear, stupid three word slogans, grovelling stupidity as well as his astonishing ability to insult just about every minority group in the country as well as some significant majority groups such as women.
So some of the cast had been chosen but there was still the minor matter of the plot. But by then it was already November and there was a couple of decks of tarot cards to play with until the muse paid a visit with a story arc of some sort.
With still no ideas in mind it was just a matter of picking a card, any card as a prompt and writing about 100 to 200 words before going on to the next one. This would at least get the word count quota for the day and with a bit of luck some sort of story might emerge.
On the second day of November I lucked out with the Wheel of Fortune from the Bohemian Gothic deck.
The inner muse conjured images of Hillary Clinton banished to the basement of the White House where she was kept in the dungeons and forced to watch endless broadcasts of Trump Total Victory Television. Of course she is still plotting and planning the revolution outside and is feeling really peeved because Bill has fled the country but not before serving her with the papers for divorce proceedings.
Amusing but no use because it is simply too difficult to make up stuff if setting the story in the States.
But after digging up the original "The Art of the Deal" from the dusty depths of the serpent library of dark tomes, it has provided endless inspiration and ideas. Using the chapter titles and content as a structure has brought order to the chaos of tarot and Instigations inspired squiggles.
I even get to recycle the prompts concerning the guided tours of hell.
So leaving the cards aside and using the chapters and content of Tony Schwartz’s book for inspiration, it did not take long for the muses to arrive and whisper all sorts of possibilities. The most promising was a change of identity for the main character. No longer a young and ambitious real estate tycoon with visions of grandeur and world domination along with a bevy of Swedish blondes but a junior devil climbing the greasy pole in the infernal hierarchy and working his way up to fame and fortune.
Since then Mephistopheles has devoted his time to using "The Art of the Deal" as a Bible for the harvesting of ever increasing numbers of souls using devious devices such as Collateralized Demonic Obligations and other definitely dodgy derivatives . If the truth be told - he actually wrote the original text and the Donald and his ghost writer Tony Schwartz just went and plagiarized his work.
Unfortunately there is a bit of a Trump fan club in the serpent circle of friends. A few weeks ago a friend had ever so avariciously ogled my copy of the Precious and begged to be allowed to borrow it. I told her I needed it for research purposes but would be quite happy to bring it for her today when we met to catch up on all the gossip.
After making bright and colourful mind maps and using highlighters to mark the juiciest morsels for later reference and now being just short of 36,666 words, I figured it is time to share this dusty old copy of “Mein Kampf”
Only today I noticed amongst all the pretty pictures a parade devoted to celebrating the return of the Americas Cup to New York after rescuing it from those awful Aussies. Amazing that bank rolling the Australian yacht was one Alan Bond - our very own version of The Donald who also dabbled in real estate and had a penthouse on the 51st floor of what was then the tallest tower in the city.
That little nugget just has to find its way into the story especially after the penthouse was open to the public this weekend and I went for a sticky beak. More than a few of the visitors commented that Alan and Donald had so much in common.
But all is not lost. More inspiration is only just around the corner - the Trump political manifesto - “Crippled America - how to make America great again” just happens to be on the shelves of the local library and the serpent is going to snaffle it tomorrow.