Me, My Muse, And Roleplay

Author’s Note: Diana at Mythos of the Mirror has a new prompt: Meet The Muse! The rules are simple. Post a conversation with your muse on your blog and then leave a link to your post in the comment section of Diana’s post here. There is no word limit. Just keep it family friendly and have fun!

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Isellta walks over to the bartender and asks for a hot toddy. He pauses. “What exactly is a hot toddy?” 

The bartender guffaws and said—–

“What are you doing?” my muse asked me.

“I’m writing. Go away.”

He stepped over to my side and peered at my computer screen through his wire-rimmed glasses. “You’re on Discord.” He made it sound like I was on the fast boat to Hell.

“Yeah? So? I’m writing.”

The bartender guffaws and—–

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re roleplaying with your characters.”

“Still counts as writing.”

The bartender—–

“It doesn’t count if it fails to advance your story.”

I sighed. “But it’s fun!“

“What? Advancing your story is not fun?”

“Well….Oh, but come on! Just look at how cute Isellta’s being here!” I rubbed my hands together. “I intend to make him slipping under the counter drunk. Mwa-hahahahahaha!”

My muse was not amused.

“Look. I’m going to work on my story in a little bit. I just want to play around a little.”

My muse was not impressed.

“Besides, roleplay is a very good way to see how my characters react to situations and characters they will never run into in my story. It’s….” I smiled smugly. “It’s character development. In roleplay, I uncover and understand certain details about my character I never even gave a thought to while working on my story proper. A lot of small details like the natural development of a fey’s wings. A lot of big details like the reason why Mark Caten never reflects on his childhood and young adulthood. That detail in particular has been bothering me about him. If his childhood was all that great, why wouldn’t he have good memories about it? One of the other writers on Discord pointed out that Mark Caten might be lying, which is a very intriguing thought. I’m really looking forward to exploring that in-story.”

He pulls out a jumbo-sized bag of Reese’s Pieces out of the pocket of his tweed suit jacket. The bag is already open. He pulls out a handful. “So, you’re saying that roleplaying your characters is helping your story?”

“Exactly!”

He pops the candy in his mouth and eats it. “That is all very interesting. I’ve never thought of character roleplaying like that before. I’ve always considered it a distraction from what you need to write.”

I preened. I preened so much I practically turned into a peacock.

He peered at my screen again. He scrolled upward to see the rest of my Discord roleplaying. “Hm.” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You still need to work on your actual story.”

“I know.”

“You have half a chapter sitting in draft mode waiting to be completed.”

“I know!”

“And you still have a multitude of unwritten SPOILER moments waiting to be written.”

“Oh my gosh I know! And I will get to work on it. Just let me give Isellta his hot toddy.” I grinned devilishly. “And then he’ll get good and drunk. He’ll be such a cute drunk too. Everyone will be all up in AWWW’s over him.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. But if you aren’t working on your next chapter in 49 minutes, I will send your Internal Editor after you and we’ll see how you like that.”

I frowned at him. “You don’t have to threaten me, you know. I will get back to that chapter very shortly. Now, leave me alone so I can get Isellta drunk.”

He shook his head. “It can be so hard being a good muse. I expect you to have two in-story chapters done before the end of the day.”

Before I could respond to that, he disappeared. As always, he got the last word in.

Meet the Muse (prompt)