Of Muses... and One of Mine

My fingers are trembling with the Insp. to write stories: anyone's really, but most especially Wes and Lina's (because they are the most adorable :)). But my main project is Clarkson and Elise's story and I will not forsake them. 

But there's the Difficulty; namely, Clarkson. He's wonderful and supportive to Elise and does everything else he should, but he won't say anything. And when I try and make him, he looks levelly at me with all that intelligence I know he has deep behind his eyes, quirks his mouth with a spark of humor and still won't speak!

Hence, I've been stuck re-arranging and deleting my writing from the last two months. And I've hardly written anything new for the last week.

It's all been quite sad, really.

There is this song from a good 'ol musical with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, to wit Anchors Aweigh. Perchance you may have even heard it before, but the lyrics go like this...

I begged her, I pleaded, I told her, 'Baby, come out of your shell,'

I told her 

'Maybe, you'll find that it's swell,' 

I argued, I threatened, I said 

'You can't send me home,

Not like this, then...'

the lyrics cease to illustrate my point, hence the mysterious cutoff. However, switch the pronouns, edit it here and there, and you have a vision of Clarkson and I.

It's not exactly that I haven't been immersing myself in other people's stories -- which is often the first answer to my story problems -- yet something still wasn't working.

Last night at 9:30 I came up to my room, discouragement in my heart. I had tried to do so much for Clarkson and I was failing miserably. Was I trying to manage him too much? I actually knew I was, but what else could I do?

Disconsolately I began going through the books on the little table under the window, old favorites, mostly, but not quite the Insp. I needed and then my eyes brightened (or at least I assume they did, the eyes of the heroines in books at least always do at moments like this one) for there on the bottom was the book - Shadow on the Trail by Zane Grey. I'd never really read the thing, but the title was not the important part, it was the name that came after...
.

I went to my desk and, chin on hand, devoured the first chapter and then turning to my laptop I wrote a whole entire scene. Clarkson, moved, looked, spoke of his own accord. and Elise, too. SUDDENLY I know where they're going again and just how they might get there.

Thus, Zane Grey's magic was proven again. I've always named L.M. Montgomery and him as two of the most important writers in my life. Sometimes, though, I forget the power of them, but they wait and turn up again right when I need them most desperately. 

And Clarkson and I are friends again.

Who are some of your "muses"?