My muse's name is Fiona

There is something inherently cruel about my writing muse, which most of my acquaintance would say is fitting. When I was trying to write short stories, in the lull while I let the zero draft of Border Patrol rest, I couldn't find an idea for a story with a pick and a miner's hat. I'd sit down to write and there was nothing. The soil was rocky, and the only thing underneath the rocks was more rock.

Now that I'm in the midst of doing my first revision of the novel, and gearing up for the second revision based on critiques of the first few chapters, story ideas are flinging themselves at me furiously, pinging off my forehead like little flints -- after, mind you, taking a hunk of flesh with them. I will never have enough time to write these stories!

You see, I have plans to start writing the sequel to Border Patrol on Monday. So unless I can incorporate some of these flint-stories lying at my feet into the next novel, I'm going to have a notebook full of fabulous ideas and no energy to write them. For at the same time I'm doing rewrites, I'm also committed to helping other people with their novels. Critiquing an entire novel takes a lot of work and energy.

The key, I believe, is cloning.