Stanley Harris and the Muse

         Stanley Harris and the Muse

         The clubs, hearts, spades and diamonds glimmered before him in liquid crystal brilliance, an inconsequential ballet for his eager wrist and fingers.          
         Jack on Queen on King, red on black on red.
          Stanley’s mind dozed ponderously between his ears, a half-conscious walrus snoring the phrase “one more game, I’ll start after this” over and over again, while he waited for his Muse to come and rescue him from the grips of a terrible creative paralysis.
         Black four on red five, black three, red two, ace.
          Stanley was down six hundred imaginary dollars when, to his dismay, his Muse spoke to him, quite clearly, as if it were peering over his shoulder at the screen. The voice startled him, and in his fright he knocked over a half-filled glass of milk, which saturated two old magazines and the remains of a cheese sandwich before dripping into the carpet. Had anyone witnessed Stanley’s fright, they would have perhaps assumed that the voice said something unsettling or violent. The voice had merely said “Writer’s Block?” gently, like a mother comforting a sick child.
         Wakened from his trance, Stanley tried to do several things at once, which included locating the source of the voice, returning the glass to an upright position, and finding something absorbent to sop up the milk and wet bread on his desk. His effort resulted in an upside-down glass, a pair of soggy and bread-smeared cotton briefs, and no idea whatsoever about who had spoken to him. He was alone, the door locked. His television and stereo both sat cold and idle. In fact, the stereo wasn’t even plugged in.
         Stanley Harris wasn’t the type of person who put much stock into supernatural forces, preferring instead to believe that the world was governed by logic and natural law, and so it took only a couple of minutes to convince himself that the voice, though quite clear, had been imaginary, probably the remnants of a half-waking dream, a little variation on the dream in which someone says the dreamer’s name so clearly that the dreamer wakes up absolutely certain he’d been spoken to.
         By the time he finished sopping up most of the milk, he felt confident that the voice that had said “Writer’s Block?” with such disturbing clarity was nothing more than his subconscious mind’s attempt to find a solution to his problem, probably nothing more than a call for Stanley to make another attempt. 
         Returning to his chair, he chose the appropriate program and typed the following line:
         Davros clutched his sword tightly, moonlight glinting off the silver blade.
         He looked at the sentence, read it over to himself, his lips moving a little as he did so. He stared at the words on the screen, scratched his ear, and then erased them.
         The moonlight glinted fiercely off the silver blade clutched in Davros’s hand.
         He rubbed his eyes, and then he erased that one too.
         Silver moonlight glinted furiously from the blade of Davros.
         Stanley erased that with a chuckle; moonlight had no business doing anything “furiously”.
         Milky white moonlight dripped from the sword-
         Stanley erased again, noting with some frustration that a small, overlooked milk puddle lingered dangerously close to his scanner. A few seconds later, a wet sock joined the briefs on the floor near the clothes hamper.
         The distant and uncaring moon-
         It was supposed to be about Davros, and so Stanley erased it again.
         The moondrenched sword-
         That wasn’t it.
         Davros’s sword-
         Not quite.
         Davros-
         No.
         Stanely took the ten of clubs and placed it beneath the jack of diamonds, which revealed a seven of hearts, which was just the card he was looking for, because there was a six of clubs blocking the ace of hearts on the last column on the right. The cards flitted this way and that on the screen, rescuing Stanley from his failure. He very nearly had the game won when the voice spoke again. This time, it said, “Ah, procrastination.”
         Stanley found it much more difficult to dismiss the voice a second time. He knew that no one had entered his apartment, and so he abandoned logic and the laws of physics for a moment, conceding the possibility that he was experiencing something that logic and physics hadn’t yet addressed.
         “It’s writer’s block,” said Stanley. “And whatever you are, come out where I can see you, please.”
         “There’s no such thing as writer’s block,” said the voice. “And if you must direct your attention to something, let’s just say I’m in the inkwell. For the sake of argument, of course.”
         Somehow, that helped, though Stanley couldn’t say exactly why. The inkwell, which was really just a small glass bottle of ink that he’d purchased at a gift shop in Ireland, sat on the shelf as still and cold as an unlit candle, next to a cleverly placed green-feathered quill pen, Stanley’s self-proclaimed Tools of the Trade. There was no indication that it was anything other than a bottle of ink, but somehow, directing his attention at an object of any sort was better than speaking into the ether.
         “What do you mean, ‘there’s no such thing as writer’s block?” Stanley asked.
         “I mean exactly that,” said the inkwell. The voice, Stanley noted, was kind enough to make it seem as if it really were emanating from the bottle.
         “Of course there is,” said Stanley. “Writers get writer’s block all the time.”
         “No, they don’t. You can’t consider yourself a writer unless you’re writing. Otherwise, you’re someone intending to write. Writers write. Aspiring writers do not.”
         “Nonsense,” said Stanley. “What about Stephen King?”
         “Stephen King has already written. That makes him an author. But he is also a writer, because he writes four hours a day.”
         “I’m a writer,” said Stanley. “I’m just having a difficult period. Call it a slump.”
         “A slump?” said the inkwell. “Show me what you’ve written, then.”
         Stanley said nothing. The truth was, he hadn’t written anything in weeks.
         “That’s what I thought,” said the inkwell. “You’re procrastinating.”
         “You can’t procrastinate unless you have a deadline,” said Stanley.
         “A deadline simply gives your procrastination a time limit. In your case, you can procrastinate indefinitely.”
         “Writer’s block, procrastination, what’s the difference? It’s the same either way. So did you show up to debate semantics with me, or what?” asked Stanley. The novelty of the talking inkwell had worn off surprisingly quickly. He decided that the being behind the voice in the inkwell was a pompous know-it all, and know it alls- are invariably tedious to deal with, whether they possess a body or not.
         “You don’t have to be rude,” said the voice.
         “You interrupted me when I was about to begin writing,” said Stanley. “Some people might consider that rude.”
         “I apologize, then,” said the inkwell.
         “Apology accepted,” said Stanley. “Now, may I ask what you want?”
         “To help you with your so-called writer’s block by disabusing you of the notions that are preventing you from writing well. Or, in your case, preventing you from writing at all.”
         “Notions?” asked Stanley. “There is more than one?”
         “Obviously,” said the inkwell. “But let’s start where we left off, which is the whole notion of Writer’s Block. You say you’re suffering from it, and I say there’s no such thing.”
         “Please, go on,” said Stanley. He was quite certain that the know-it-all inkwell would talk itself dry before long, and he looked forward to it. 
         “Writer’s block, as you call it, is either one of two things,” said the Inkwell. “If you haven’t written anything, it’s procrastination. You’re putting off writing because you’re afraid that you’re going to write badly. You’re afraid that someone else will discover it and point out its low quality, or worse, you’ll read it and discover for yourself how bad it is, which will make it even more difficult the next time you try to write.”
         Stanley shifted uncomfortably in his chair; the inkwell had struck quite close to the mark. Of course, he had no intention of admitting it.
         “Now, when you make the decision to stop procrastinating, and actually write something, and you suddenly can’t go on, that’s indecision. You become paralyzed by the choices you are faced with, and end up choosing to do nothing,” the inkwell said.
         “That sounds like writer’s block to me,” said Stanley.
         “In both cases, the writer, or aspiring writer as the case may be, has made a personal choice to refrain from writing. ‘Writer’s block’ is a convenient way to explain one’s choice to not write by blaming that choice on a malady caused by external forces. ‘Writer’s block’ enables you to be a victim of something, rather than a free person exercising choice and reaping the consequences. At this moment, there is absolutely nothing preventing you from sitting down and writing something. Despite the absence of obstacles, you play cards. If you agree that you chose to play cards, it must follow that you chose not to write. You cannot do both at once.”
         Stanley had to admit that there was a certain cold logic to the inkwell’s argument.
         “And I suppose you have the cure,” he said.
         “You’re still thinking of it like a disease,” said the inkwell. “Once you recognize that writer’s block is just a choice dressed up in a fancy suit, the solution is self-evident. If you’re unsatisfied with your choice, you simply make a different choice.”
         “Simply choose to write? That’s a trite answer,” said Stanley. “It reminds me of Nancy Reagan’s ‘Say No To Drugs’ campaign. It’s easy. You just start typing. Maybe you could start a ‘Say Yes to Writing’ campaign. We could get Nancy Reagan to do a spot for television, something with a bunch of inner-city kids with magic pencils chanting ‘Say Yes to Writing!’” Stanley waved his hand about, clutching an imaginary magic wand in his palm.
         “You’re being rude again,” said the inkwell.
         “You’re spouting platitudes,” said Stanley.
         “If I am, it’s only because you’re clinging to euphemisms,” said the inkwell. “You choose not to write. Whether you call it a choice or you snuggle comfortably in your imagined malady, the page is still blank.”
         Stanley paused to remind himself that he hadn’t actually been argued into a corner by an inkwell, because they had agreed that inkwell had only been chosen for Stanley’s convenience. Since he couldn’t come up with a suitable retort, he decided to change the subject.
         “You said there were notions that you were going to disabuse me of. So far, you’ve only covered one, though I am not convinced about it.”
         “I don’t think we were quite done discussing Writers, block, but if you want to discuss another, let’s discuss your Muse.”
         “I suppose you’re the Muse?”
         “No, of course not. There is no such thing as a Muse.”
         Stanley scoffed. “Haven’t you ever been stuck for an idea, and then suddenly there’s a voice in your head that leads you in an entirely different direction, one that you wouldn’t have thought of on your own?”
         “No,” said the inkwell. “And neither have you.”
         “I have too,” said Stanley. He whipped the chair around to face the keyboard, and with a flick of the mouse he chose a file and opened it. He spun around again, gesturing toward the screen.
         “I had no idea this was going to happen when I started this story,” said Stanley, poking his finger at the screen. The vehemence of his gesture left several fingerprints on the glass. “This is my Muse speaking to me,” he said.
         “On the top of the page it says ‘The Torch-Rider’s Fury’, by Stanley Harris.”
         “Well, I wrote it.”
         “You just told me you didn’t. You said your muse wrote it. Rather selfish of you to take credit for something you didn’t do. Of course, you were entirely justified in leaving out the Muse, because there wasn’t a Muse who had anything to do with it.”
         “I just told you, I had a voice in my head that turned the story in a completely different direction. I would never have thought of that on my own.”
         “You don’t believe that,” said the Inkwell. And it was true. Stanley really didn’t believe for a minute in Muses. However, the inkwell’s argument against the existence of Writer’s Block had Stanely in a lather, and he defended the Muse position out of sheer spite.
         “Well, what about you, then?”
         “What about me?” asked the inkwell.
         “You’re here to get me to write. That makes you a Muse. There, I have you.”
         “I’m not here to get you to write. I’m here to teach. You have to make your choices on your own.”
         “So what are you then?”
         “Does it matter?”
         “Well, we’re arguing about the presence or absence of a supernatural source of inspiration, aren’t we?”
         “I’m not arguing anything of the sort. Inspiration is simply the ability to tap what is already present in your mind.”
         “Well, what about God, then?”
         “What about Him?”
         “Doesn’t he inspire people?”
         “Do you believe He does?”
         “No,” said Stanley.
         “That’s all right,” said the inkwell. “The presence or absence of God has nothing to do with what inspires you. Look at it both ways for a moment. If you believe that God exists, and that God loves you, you must also believe that God placed you here for a purpose. If that purpose is writing, then he expects you to write. It’s possible that if there is a God, and he does communicate, he might make a suggestion as to what you should write, but not how you should write it. God’s words on the page in place of yours would violate your free will, which would eliminate the need for you to make any choices at all.”
         Stanley found he was interested in spite of himself. The voice continued.
         “On the other hand, if you don’t believe that God exists, or at the very least doesn’t communicate with you, you arrive at the same place. Either way, your words end up being your own. Now substitute  the Muse for God. Either there is no Muse, or you do not have free will. In the past, you chose to write ‘The Torch-Rider’s Fury’, and more recently, you chose to play cards. Since it appears that you have the capacity to choose what you are going to do, it follows that no God or Muse is making those choices for you. Now that you understand this, you won’t have to waste any more time waiting for some supernatural force to come and rescue you from your choice to procrastinate.”
         Stanley suddenly had to fight the urge to hurl the inkwell at the apartment door. He would have done so had it not been for the little unemotional voice reminding him that the inkwell was really nothing more than a symbol. Nevertheless, the prospect of throwing that symbol across the room was enormously satisfying and difficult to resist.
         “So what, did God send you?”
         “You just said that you don’t believe in God.”
         “Let’s get back to your myths,” said Stanley. “So far, I’m playing Solitaire because I’m choosing not to write, and no one is going to come and give me a magic word that will release my latent powers of imagination.”
         “You are right about the lack of a magic word, but wrong in assuming your latent powers of imagination need releasing,” said the inkwell.
         “Well at least I have that going for me,” said Stanley.
         “You misunderstand,” said the inkwell. “The idea that imagination is somehow responsible for great writing is another misconception. Imagination, while useful in generating ideas, is practically useless during the writing process.”
         “All right,” said Stanley, “I’ll give you the Muse argument, I’ll even concede that the procrastination bit has some merit. But the idea that imagination isn’t useful in writing is absurd. I think you’re just reaching for anything that might drag an emotional response from me.”
         “I don’t care about your emotional state,” said the Inkwell. “The fact is, it’s very difficult to imagine anything unless you have some frame of reference. In other words, imagination is nothing more than a reevaluation of experiences or knowledge you already have.”
         “I can imagine things that I haven’t experienced,” said Stanley. “For example, I can imagine what it would be like to be a spirit, hovering over my body.”
         “And how would you describe that?” asked the inkwell.
         “I would describe it in terms of what was around me, and the feelings I was experiencing.”
         “But you are limited,” said the inkwell. “And not by your imagination.”
         “I’m limited by language,” said Stanley.
         “Precisely. You can’t describe something that hasn’t already been included in your language, or more precisely, your command of the language. Of course, you can’t purely imagine anything anyway, so you will always have language available to describe what you envision. If you want to imagine a fantastical beast, for example, you have to do so in terms of beasts you have already seen or heard about. You will invariably describe it in terms of teeth, horns, scales, fur, eyes, and so forth.”
         “Which is why you’re in inkwell instead of a disembodied voice?”
         “Or rather, why I am a voice and not merely images or impressions. You need to have a frame of reference in order to gain understanding and make new experiences meaningful to you. Writing is no different. Great writers have great memories, not great imaginations. They are thieves. They pilfer conversations. A good writer will pickpocket interesting images and kidnap human foibles and eccentricities and give them to his characters. Or her characters, as the case may be.”
         “So you’re saying that J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t use his imagination when he wrote The Lord of the Rings?”
         “He didn’t invent elves, or dwarves, or goblins, or dragons, or magic rings, or war. He used his own extensive knowledge of European myths and legends, and his considerable expertise in languages to weave together his tales. As Tolkien himself put it, ‘The tale grew in the telling’. The father of all of today’s fantasy made it clear that he didn’t conjure up his story in his imagination, and then wrote it down. He wrote first, and the tale grew as it was being written.
         “Lewis Carroll’s  Alice in Wonderland features a real-life person, Alice Liddell, caught in a series of logical puzzles, and it should come as no surprise to learn that Charles Dodgson, who wrote under the name Carroll, was a professor of logic. Through the Looking-Glass is based upon a game of Chess. It is unfortunate that people fall into the trap of relying on some nebulous thing like ‘imagination’ when in all likelihood they possess a treasure-trove of real experiences waiting to be shaped.”
         Stanley sighed and turned back to his computer screen. “So you’ve taken away imagination and inspiration. According to you, they don’t exist. I don’t see how this information frees me or helps me at all.”
         The inkwell sighed, which was somewhat unsettling for Stanley.
         “I haven’t taken away either one. I merely pointed out that they are by-products of writing, and not indispensable tools necessary for a writer to begin his work.”
         “You’re making it harder for me, instead of easier,” said Stanley.
         “That is because you haven’t given up on the idea that outside forces are responsible for what you do.”
         “So you think that good writers exist in a vacuum and aren’t swayed at all by external forces? That’s like saying a sailing ship should be able to move without the wind, Stanley declared.
         “That is an excellent analogy, Stanley,” said the inkwell. “But I don’t think you’ve taken it far enough. The wind in your analogy represents the external forces that push the writer, what you call inspiration and imagination, correct?”
         “Yes.”
         “And how does a sailing ship move?” asked the inkwell.
         “With sails,” said Stanley. He smiled and pointed a finger at the inkwell. “I see where you are going with this,” he said. “A sailing ship is propelled by the wind, but the sails can’t catch the wind until the sailors put them up. In other words, it’s the sailors, and not the wind, that move the ship.”
         “Right. Outside forces might help determine the speed at which the ship gets to its destination, but it is the sailors who decide when and where to move. To take it even further, the ship with the best compliment of sailors will, on the average, be the most successful ship.”
         “Ok, so how do I get good sailors for my ship?” asked Stanley.
         “Think about it. How do you suppose a sailor becomes competent at sea?”
         Stanley thought about it, and replied, “he goes to sea and works on a ship. While he’s out there working, he learns from other, more experienced sailors and then applies what he learns to his own experience. Before he knows it, climbing the rigging and hoisting the mainsail will be second nature.”
         Stanley could think of nothing to say. He stared at his bare feet while respect and resentment struggled in his heart. There was something so smug about that bottle of ink, something that made Stanley want to take it to the trash and spill the contents before crushing the glass in the trash compactor while shouting something like “who’s inspired now?” But what he found even more infuriating was that the inkwell was right, and it hurt Stanley’s pride to think that he needed to be taught a writing lesson, or that the teacher had to inhabit an inkwell because Stanley wasn’t equipped to deal with anything as abstract as a disembodied voice. Far worse than any of that was the sting of admitting that he, Stanley Harris, had been the only real obstacle standing in the way of his work.
         “You are right, I-“ Stanley stopped. Sitting on the shelf, propped against the jar of ink was a bright white card. In a thin, elegant script that reminded Stanley of John Hancock, the card read:

                   Hone your craft.

                   Sail your ship.


         “Are you…are you still here?” Stanley asked. He looked around, understanding the futility of the act as he did so. He was quite alone. Only the computer glimmered back at him, staring into the tiny apartment like one vast, vacant eye.
         The time of his father was over. Davros held the sword now, gripped firmly in his gloved right hand. At his feet, the pale, ghostly shape of his father lay in a pool of moonlight, an emaciated husk of a man, robbed too early of his youth and vigor-
         Stanley erased the second sentence.
         The pale, ghostly shape of his father, an emaciated husk of a man robbed too early of strength and vigor, lay at his feet.
         Stanley erased it again.
         The weight of it hung like a curse on his arm while his father’s emaciated, husk lay in a pool of moonlight at his feet.
         He sighed and erased the entire thing. He sighed and clicked his mouse.
          There were two aces on top.
         Red queen on black king. An open four, red. Black three on top of a red jack-
         He paused.
         “No,” he said.
         It wasn’t working, and thanks to the inkwell, Stanley had a better idea why. In retrospect, it was absurdly simple. It wasn’t writers block or absent muses or any sort of metaphysical hocus-pocus. The fact was, he didn’t know the first thing about swords. In fact, outside of the movies, he’d never seen one up close. He knew nothing about how they were made or who made them, or who was likely to carry them. Of course, the story wasn’t actually about the sword; it was about Davros’s relationship with his father, which was something Stanley did know about. But the sword was an important element, meant to symbolize all the things a son inherits from his father, and that was why the story had gotten nowhere.
         Stanley stood up and walked away from his computer. On the couch, nestled between a glass bowl that contained the remnants of a popcorn snack and an old copy of Dragon Magazine was his leather jacket. He looked back at the shelf, where the little white card still sat propped against the bottle of ink.
         “I think I need to go out and feel the wind before I can try catching it,” he said. Without waiting for a reply, Stanley Harris went out for a walk. Second Chance books was only a couple blocks down, and Stanley had no doubt that he could find couple of worn volumes about swords somewhere among the confused and dusty stacks.