My Muse Sucks

I understand why people talk about Muses when they try to describe the creative process. It's because writing is a confidence game. Most days I can fool myself into believing I'm brillant and that my ideas are cool and worth pursuing. Today, I'm having one of those days where every idea I try to come up with seems cliche and stupid.

Part of the problem is that I'm trying to tackle a proposal for an urban fantasy that I actually wrote some time ago. It's a proposal for a novel that my editor passed on. But, I have several "drawers" full of such things, because I always like to send in three proposals to my editor: the one I think she wants, the one I want, and one I make up off the seat of my pants. In the past, I've been pretty accurate in what I think will sell, but I've been surprised--Precinct 13 was actually the "seat of my pants" proposal, and I spent a lot of time thinking, "Really, this is the one you want??" But, I got over my shock eventually, and had a great time writing that book.

Anyway, I was looking through some of the ideas in the "reject" pile and started trying to figure out if there were any good bits to any of them. No surprise, perhaps, there are. However, the one I'm working on revising has some world-building that's exciting, but the whole rest of it-- the character, her situation, her choices-- all need a major overhaul. So I've been sitting at the coffee shop with my notebook trying to write out the cool of the world-building ideas and restructure a story around it.

It's not working.

I've had coffee (the usual food preferred by my "Muse,") but I'm not getting anywhere. I don't know if it's because I'm out of practice writing original fiction or if it's because EVERY IDEA REALLY *IS* STUPID. I've decided to forge ahead, but, when you're banging your head... everything else seems preferrable. It's probably a good thing that I've relocated to a coffeeshop because otherwise I'd be decorating our porch for the holidays, doing the dishes, or probably tackling any number of other projects that's been on my "honey do" list for years.

Grrr.

Okay, enough whining. Back to it!