Player as Muse

My player had a wonderful time over spring break reading and writing about her favorite topic and being a muse. Her alter ego, Mary, has a chapter to write and is on a deadline, but the player made it fun by reminding her how much she LOVES what she is studying and translating into words for others.

She started by doing a lot of reading from books and journal articles -- total Geek Fest! She knows a lot about this topic, but she still couldn't get enough and loved seeing how others wrote about it and talked about it and thought about it in so many different ways. Oh, the possibilities!

But then, she had to get serious about writing something. What direction should she take? Her editor gave her so much freedom. All that 'agency' and 'autonomy' which is soooo wonderful, but.... then she started questioning herself about whether or not she ultimately, would be giving the editor what she really wanted. She started questioning herself and wondering whether this was all that much fun afterall. So, she went to a couple of movies. She saw Oz, then the silly one, the Magnificent Burt Wonderstone. She went out for lunch with a girlfriend; out to dinner with her husband. Total Avoidance.

But somewhere along the way, after lots of thinking, and lots of avoidance, and a little bit of reading of a mystery novel instead of sitting down to the computer, Mary realized the player had all along been gathering ideas. She'd collected LOTS of great ideas in her magic satchel. They'd been sorting and organizing and forming into full blown sentences and paragraphs right before her eyes. They started writing together, side-by-side, and the 'flow' started flowing, more words started coming, connecting the bits and pieces of ideas together, and all was good.