Saturday, October 7, 2023

She's a liar. Or, at least, so very out of touch with the limitations of physical reality.

Who am I talking about? My Muse!

A few months ago, I walked into my "writing chamber" to continue work on Brave New Normal (the sequel to Much Ado About Corona). As usual, my Muse was waiting for me. If I show up every day, she shows up. (And if I miss a day, she plays hard to get.)

That day, however, she made a shocking suggestion (command, really, she's a taskmaster): Stop writing Brave New Normal and finish up All the Humans Are Sleeping.

I began writing All the Humans Are Sleeping twenty years ago. This short novella is set after a nuclear holocaust, where the 4.2 million survivors have been herded into virtual reality chambers buried deep beneath the surface of the Arctic Circle. Most of the story doesn't take place inside their digital metaverse escape, but rather on a remote outpost in Northern Norway, where a robot takes one of the sleeping humans out of the digital utopia.

The novella was almost done. It would only take a little editing to have it ready. That's what my Muse told me.

And I believed her.

Ten drafts later, I've chopped off 5,000 words, and my sneaky Muse has added 25,000. The story has gone from 20,000 words to 40,000 (about 125 pages).

She wanted to keep going, but we struck a deal: All the Humans are Sleeping will be part one of a three-part trilogy, followed by All the Humans are Dying and All the Humans are Waking.

But I also made it clear that I wouldn't work on part two, until Brave New Normal is done.

My Muse agreed, after making some complaints about all the time I waste sleeping each night.

Anyway, we both can't wait to share All the Humans are Sleeping with you. So I better get back to editing...

While I'm editing, you may want to check out another way I have of coaxing my Muse to save me from writer's block — which I revealed in this article last year.

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