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Bath, Muse, RiverBook, Second Book, Third Book, Virginia Woolf
In my perfect, fanciful world, Virginia Woolf is my muse. In my real one, all she has ever done is lead me to abandon punctuation & paragraphs while I, in the mistaken belief that I understand ‘stream of consciousness’ well enough to make it a viable motif in my own writing, follow like a witless fool. I freely confess to having wasted a lot of valuable time in this pointless pursuit.
My actual muse is a creature who lives somewhere in my bathroom. (She is probably a Daddy Long Legs or a small spider. Or even a helpful cobweb.) I know this because, without fail, each time I run a bath with the specific aim of mulling over a particularly puzzling writing-related issue, once I lie down in the water, I invariable mull usefully.
It happened this morning. With Book Two finished (draft zero – see above) & tucked away in a drawer to marinade for a week or two, I need something to do. (I’m not one of those writers who can amuse themselves with a short story or a bit of poetry. If it isn’t the book I’ve finished, then it has it be the one I’m about to start.)
For the past two days I’ve been outlining Book Three. The idea has been hanging round for some time & all at once, I got it. Apart that is for a small but crucial plot strand.
Cue a delicious, lavender & rose scented Sunday morning bath…
Job done.
It’s embryonic of course, but I do think it has [Daddy Long] legs… And it’s another ghost story…
Making it up as I go along 
of course!
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‘We all come from the Goddess
And to Her we shall return
Like a drop of rain,
Flowing to the ocean…’
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You know, there is a scientific reason for creativity being especially sparked around water. Something about negative ions created around rushing water, like a faucet or shower head, a waterfall or the sea. The science is pretty cool.
But, as you know, cariad, I’m of a more whimsical bend. We are creatures of the water, made of so much water. I’m more in the mind that freewater spirits speak to those bound within us. They’re what keep the body-bound water spirits sane until they’re free again. Any stories not used (not everyone is an artist, of course) get carried back out into the world and fed to another unwitting soul showering, bathing, swimming, or simply sitting by the sea.
All the water that has ever existed is still someplace in our world, whether in the air, a body of water, or ourselves.
I think a lot about immortality these days. 🙂 I feel a blog post coming on.
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