Why creativity demons are evil...

[mandolin]

IN GENERAL, creativity demons are sadistic little bastards. Here's my list of reasons why:

1. When you're stuck midway through a long project that has a lot of people riding on it, the demons rebel and only flood you with ideas for ANOTHER story to the point that you have to drop everything and work on the new one.
   
2. Halfway through the second story, once it's got a following and is getting to the good stuff... the well runs dry and they quit inspiring you.
   
3. When you actually NEED some inspiration for a good project, the only thing they'll give you is a stream of unwritable Mary Sues.
   
4. They only give you the best ideas when you're 5000 miles away from a typewriter, keyboard, or any sort of writing implement. Or in the middle of a class or meeting you're SUPPOSED to be paying close attention to.
   
5. Or when you're suffering shoulder pain and absolutely cannot, under any circumstances, pick up a pen or sit at a computer.
   
6. Halfway through plotting a story, they suddenly change up on you and want to take the fic in a whole new direction. You comply, and then they want to go back to the old way.
   
7. They like nagging you in public - at school, at work, on a bus - because they know if you talk back to them you'll look like a nutcase.
   
8. When it comes to editing, they're TOTAL hypocrites. (The same bunch who steered me through a string of implausibilities in "Murphy's Law" started nitpicking at slight implausibilities in a friend's story. Hello, Kettle, this is Pot, you're black!)
   
9. OR, they won't have anything to do with editing at all. If you get a beta, and the beta takes more than a day, they sulk for weeks.
   
10. Take your attention span and divide it by 100. Now that's a bit bigger than the average creativity demon's attention span.
    
11. They have no sympathy for illness getting in the way of writing.
    
12. When IE and Comcast ("Cannot find server" my ass!) nuke the long long post you put up on your blog or a message board and you didn't save it, they decide that's it for the evening and make faces at you. (gives her demons a meaningful look)
    
13. After a hiatus, you promise your readers that it won't be another month til the next part... but they refuse to help you fix the issues you're having with it and it ends up being LONGER. *grr*
    

Ahem.

Yep. You guessed it. Please don't ask about new parts of "The Key and the Sword." Recent events have kind of made me realize that there are some issues I'm having with the story that need to be fixed, and my life needs to be organized a bit more, too. And I seem to have caught ANOTHER cold. This winter sucks, weather-wise.

*sigh* Gamine, if you happen to stumble across this, need any help with "Angel With Two Faces?" Or are your demons as much of a pain as mine?

Comments

Have You Tried Whacking Them With A Trout?

[(Anonymous)]

Not that it works for me all that often, but it *has* been known to get my creativity demons to at least start talking to each other again.

...and I'd like to add "They lounge about, completely mute, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday - then, at 11:57pm Sunday night, suddenly bombard you - with ideas for the *exact* plotline you've been stuck on for weeks - knowing full damn well that you need to be up at 5:30am the next morning." Oooh, and "They nag you about their stories - some legitimate, many not - all day while you're at work - but the *instant* you arrive home, they abandon you completely."

The ruddy lot of bastards. I can feel them burning the notes they took on their ideas all day through right now too. I actually tried to *force* them to pull their weight last week, and they damn near rioted on my until they realized it was far easier to simply give me the silent treatment. Aaaaaarg. I had to bribe them with humoring their request to adopt and begin fleshing out one of Death's story suggestions in order to get them to talk to me again, and I almost - *almost* - feel sorry for using Drake like that. He's supposed to be *my* squeak toy, not the demons'. *sigh* Oh well. Here's hoping you smite your cold in better-than-average time, and that you manage to track down writer's block and beat the demons with it until they call a truce. Or whatever tends to work with them.

And, seriously, nitpicks are great. Really. The story's run into a brick wall at this point, so going back and smoothing over earlier plot holes keeps *those* creativity demons sated, if nothing else.

Must put the caffeine down and walk away from the computer now. I'm scaring your readers. ;) Cheer up, ne?

-War