February 11th 2009
Waiting for Inspiration: A Writer’s Morality Play
Waiting for Inspiration: A Writer’s Morality Play In Half An Act
The players, Three Fairies:
Inspiration-a classical sparkly-winged tinker-bell type
Motivation–a rather weasely looking fellow in the mode of a low rent Puck
Discipline–a 500 pound gorilla in a tutu and obviously taped-on wings
The scene:
A gray stage, empty save for a gray desk with a laptop and two chairs.
Discipline: It’s nine, let’s get to work on this manuscript.
Motivation: (Nervously) Don’t you think we should wait for Inspiration? She was here at the beginning.
Discipline: Yeah, and she’ll be back at the end to take all the credit, just like always. Between now and then we won’t see hide nor hair of her.
Inspiration: (In the wings) Just to show him, I’m not going to come help with their stinky old manusc—Oooh, shiny. (Turns away, the sounds of bells and sprinkled fairy dust fade into the distance)
Discipline: Are you going to help me with this, or not?
Motivation: I don’t know. I really like Inspiration. She’s almost as good as deadlines for getting me moving.
Discipline: Speaking of dead lines, if you don’t get your ass in that chair and write some good lines, dead is exactly what you’ll be. (Cracks enormous knuckles and glares at Motivation menacingly)
Motivation: Let me see about that next scene opening….
Discipline: There we go.
The moral: Motivation rocks when it’s there for you, but Discipline is what makes deadlines. Forget Inspiration.
Filed under For Novelists, learning to write, writing humor. You can also use this URL to trackback.
There are 10 comments. Get the RSS feed for comments on this entry.
Pingbacks
- Pingback on Feb 22nd, 2009 at 11:03 pm
- Pingback on Jan 10th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
- Pingback on Apr 7th, 2013 at 5:22 pm
Have your say:
Author Information
Kelly McCullough
Kelly McCullough is a fantasy and science fiction author. He lives in Wisconsin with his physics professor wife and a small herd of cats. His novels include the WebMage and Fallen Blade series—Penguin/ACE. His short fiction has appeared in numerous venues including Writers of the Future and Weird Tales. He also dabbles in science fiction as science education with The Chronicles of the Wandering Star—part of an NSF-funded science curriculum—and the science comic Hanny & the Mystery of the Voorwerp, which he co-authored and co-edited—funding provided by NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope. Visit site.
Topics
- announcements
- Blogroll
- Contributors
- Diversity
- featured posts
- For Novelists
- genre
- Hard SF
- language
- launchpad
- learning to write
- Mindy Klasky
- Not Remotely Writing Related
- otherness
- our authors
- our books
- publicity and promotion
- publishing
- publishing trends
- reading
- sampler
- the business of writing
- Uncategorized
- video
- women in SF
- writing humor
- writing life
- writing process
Archives
Browse our archives:
1. Liane Merciel on Feb 11th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Well done, sir, well done.
2. Megs on Feb 11th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Too funny! and too true!
3. Mary Lewys on Feb 11th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
The imagery is perfect and the morale is too true!
4. Diana Pharaoh Francis on Feb 11th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
You rawk!
5. Kelly McCullough on Feb 11th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Liane Merciel, Megs, Mary Lewys, Diana Pharaoh Francis, thank you all.
This production is brought to you by the current WIP which is fighting tooth and nail not to be written. The gorilla is winning, but it’s doing it with very little support from its fellow faeries.
6. Lisa Mantchev on Feb 11th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
This. Was. FABULOUS.
7. Kelly McCullough on Feb 12th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Thanks, Lisa.