"Did you write the book of love
And do you have faith in God above?
If the Bible tells you so.
Now do you believe in Rock 'n' roll
And can music save your mortal soul
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?"
-- "American Pie", Don McLean
Music is often the muse that inspires me to write. That song with the infectious beat and the soulful lyrics. The one that seemed to have been written just for me. Played on the radio as if God himself was the DJ and he knew just what I needed to hear. No particular genre; I listen to it all. Everything from Mozart to Madonna to Marilyn Manson. From Genesis to Godsmack. From Abba to ZZ Top and everything in between. If it speaks to me, and moves me, you'll probably find a quote from it in a short story or presenting a chapter in my novel.
That being said I have to admit, when I start writing, I seem to become the instrument of the muse. The music falls to the background and my story plays before me like a well-choreographed movie. I never feel like I am the director however. Instead I feel like the cameraman trying to keep up with the action, recording it in my word processor or handy-dandy notebook. This is as true today as it was when I started writing in college.
I wrote my first novel almost a decade ago. Today, the paperback and e-book can be bought online thanks to the modern miracle of print-on-demand publishing. Ten years seems like a lot of time because of everything life has brought me in that time. In the spans of time involving my book though, it seems more like an overnight rush.
I still remember 1993. I remember I was bored with college, but knew it was the key to my future. Not just a career in software design, which my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science has afforded me, but in appreciating the world around me. College can be frightening as well as exhilarating. It can also be a very lonely place. I think that's why sororities and fraternities exist -- to help people feel like they belong somewhere. I never joined a fraternity house, though I often imagined I'd fit in well at Lambda Lambda Lambda (from "Revenge of the Nerds").
It was this loneliness that inspired me to write a poem, about the Woman of My Dreams, someone I imagined I'd never meet in the flesh. She was my muse and still is. It was a dark, gothic poem that in turn inspired me to write my first real short story, "For The Blood Is The Life". After sharing this story with some friends of mine, they suggested it could make a really good book if there was some meat to it. A 5,000-word story became a 50,000-word novella by the end of 1993. It was written down in my notebooks for school, when I should have been taking notes in class. Research about compiler design or calculus was derailed into history of the Salem Witch Trials. Late night cram sessions turned into sleepless nights pulling whole chapters out of the ether of my dreams.
I am not sure who said it first, but I am fond of quoting the following painful piece of advice I have for my fellow authors, "Writing is easy; getting published is the hard part." I of course believed my story was good and deserved to be published. I never, ever expected to get rich or famous from my book. Odds are I'll win the lottery first. My overriding concern was that it be written. What started as a simple story came to life and demanded to be told. My winged muse was there, not only supplying the story, but also driving me hard to write it. I would have gone insane had I ignored her. ("I do not suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.")
I excitedly sent my manuscript to the Registrar of Copyrights at the Library of Congress. Once secure in the knowledge that no one would be able to claim my masterpiece as their own, I set out to have it published. It was quickly and repeatedly rejected. I kept my first rejection letter, from Tor Books. It would appear to be a standard template rejection, feigning a polite respect for my work, but alas, they were not interested in my manuscript. I kept it not only because it was the first of many rejection letters, but because it was in desperate need of an Editor! (This letter is now immortalized by Jennifer Hollowell's Writers' Block Project.)
If I can offer any advice at all to my fellow writers, it is: do not give up on your manuscript. If it was meant to be written then it was meant to be read. Even if it is only your small circle of friends who get the joy of reading it now, someone else out there is bound to want to read it. You must get it in their hands.
Authors are a unique breed of artist. We have no paints and brushes, no musical instruments, no celluloid film nor cathode ray tubes to present our art. We have paper and ink, a monochrome serial collection of words to express ourselves. We have language and grammar to restrict us. But our landscape is the human imagination, and we can shape that medium into something more permanent than marble. In the beginning there was the word, and it is still good.