The only fondling I do these days, if you don't count the cat, is in my fantasies. Nice as that is, I'm lucky that my muse fondles me. Sometimes he gently wakes me in the night, with a thought or a fading dream, but usually he awakens me early in the morning with a muselike kiss, an idea which is too good to risk losing by falling back to sleep.
I always listen to him. If I'm too tired, or if I've neglected to leave a notebook and pen beside the bed, I repeat the thought to myself until I fall back to sleep. This is no guarantee I will remember it when I'm ready to get up. Sometimes I drag myself out of bed to my desk, and scratch out the words in the dark, hoping I'm on a blank page; sometimes in the light of day, I see I've written over another entry.
Because I've come to expect my muse to visit, and I've come to trust him, I have notebooks full of his nudges-- observations, images, questions, leads to a story I'm working on-- just waiting for me to use them. Good stuff. Inspiration. Thoughts culled from the swirl of my subconsious undercurrent by my insistent muse.
Now it's a matter of time. I owe it to my muse to put his offerings to use, lest he back off, offended that I'm letting his ideas lie fallow. Something always intervenes, and grabs my time and attention. So far my muse is patient. But I'm not.
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