WHO THE HECK STOLE MY MAP! or REVERSE TACTICS

BE KIND REWIND…ER….

Walks to the edge of the stage and peeks out, notices you’re not really paying attention to the schedule of events so you shouldn’t notice my  sudden arrival. Storms stage center as if I’m not the one who is late…cuz for once I’m not late.  I’m just long over due ( stop looking at your calendars I know when I was here last, hmph).

So a funny thing happened on the way home when I was here. The muse was driving the escape car when we took off and I didn’t set that navigation thing because, frankly, her voice annoys the f*ck out of me. *shrugs*.

We were supposed to go straight home because I obviously have new projects to work on  and a Mac (truck or laptop take your pick) of OLD projects to work on.

I don’t know what happened. The top was down, it was kinda breezy. And we were driving, and driving and driving somemore.

And after a while I was like, “ hey yo, dude. Where we at?”

And the Muse was like, “I dunno”

My anxiety rose and my heart started to race

“whatchu mean,  you dunno, punk you’re driving! Where are we?”

At this point that bi.. I mean dude took some kind of exception with me calling him a punk. Apparently he was feeling all his southern  roots and the last thing he was about to do was let me, a mere female talk ish about his directional skills AND call him anything other than some overgrown muscle bound sex hound a man of manly proportions and tendancies.

This bit.. punk.. er MUSE, left me!   Y’all, he just poofed be goned!

Vanished. Abracadabra.  Left my ass in the middle of the page.

 The last thing he  said  was “ You know what?” (Nothing good ever comes from an angry southerner starting a conversations with “you know what?”) “You’re the one who had the big trip idea, you’re the one with the over loaded schedule and you are most definitely the one who forgot to turn on the gps. Find your own damn way home. And when you get there, don’t be looking for me. I’m going on vacation. Expect to do some begging when I get back. I need bribes, because obviously you have forgotten how this relationship works. I’m the muse and you cater to me.”

I tried to protest. “Dude, you’re not seriously about to leave me like this? How am I supposed to get home? There isn’t even very much gas in the tank.”

At this point, I’m standing in the passenger seat of the convertible yelling at him as he paces on the side of the road.  Standing in a muse’s car, heels digging into the leather of his precious seats, was obviously the WRONG thing to be doing in that moment.

“You have no respect. You just” he ran his hands angrily through his hair.

Frustration and tension flowed between us on that highway like the thermal heat waves over the asphalt.

The muse walked up to the passenger door. Tears where shimmering in both of our eyes.  His tone completely changed.  “You’re still not ready, baby. I’ll be back.” He rubbed a knuckle over my jaw and kissed my forehead and then *POOOOOOOFFFFFFFF* Fairy sparkles and wind chimes dinging that bit…punk. HE LEFT ME Y’all!

The muse ran away. Just freaking punked out and left me in the middle of no damn where with a hundred characters in a caravan staring at me like confused children.

“Hey lady, are we there yet?”  When the first one started to wail, I lost it. I seriously …I lost my damn mind. I closed my laptop and got in bed… and so that’s where I’ve been.

What that has to do with the title on your program… be kind, rewind… well, I had no clue when I sat down to blog. But now I know that as an author/writer, it means you have to be kind to yourself and rewind the tape. Go back to …whatever part of the story you’re in and then start from there.  Let the cursor flash on the screen while you do something other than stare at the stark white page.  Go live life. Deal with emotions and … just back up. And when you’re ready to write…the muse will show up and spank your butt like you’re a naughty catholic school girl do what muses do.  If you’re a reader…be patient with your author/writer friends.  Let them entertain you in other ways. The pressure to write is already something they live with daily.  The voices in their head …well really, they are there. And when the go silent we kind of freak out.  We’ve never NOT heard them. So we are lost and a lone when there isn’t someone talking about something.  And sometimes they come back speaking a different language. So we are stranded in the foreign country of our mind. It’s like being in the middle of the fall of Babylon. Where turning every which way, people are talking, tugging and pushing at us but we don’t speak the gibberish they speak and we are confused. And scared.

So … very… very… scared.   So be kind. Be patient. Be understanding.

Rewind: read something you loved from last year. Leave a good review.  And if you see our muses loitering around in a bar somewhere…tell them we miss them and we’d like for them to come home now.