The Muse is Missing

Lest anyone think this writing thing is easy, Siciliano's bossman Steve Siciliano contributes the following.

It’s four in the morning, I’m staring at a blank computer screen and I’m wondering where my muse is. She hasn’t been around lately (for some reason I’ve always thought of my muse as a woman) and I have to admit that I’m getting concerned. I’m beginning to think I’ve done something to upset her or, more likely, didn’t do something and the inaction upset her. Perhaps she is angry about that book I never finished, or the countless ideas she gave me for short stories that I never even started. It’s a good thing I don’t have to rely on writing to make my living because if I did I’d be in serious trouble.

Maybe another cup of coffee will help. Maybe it would help if I lit my pipe…

An hour later now and still I can’t get started. Oh, it’s not that I don’t have ideas. I can certainly write about that gueuze Barb and I drank while sitting on the backyard deck recently—about how it had the same color of the evening rays of sunlight that were filtering down through the trees, about its thick, creamy head that looked liked a billowing white cloud, about how its tartness reminded me of sauerkraut and about the funny face Barb made after she took her first sip.

Or I could write about that bar we went to last week on the lower west side where we ran into that young man who parks cars at the cancer center at St. Mary’s. I could write about how he recognized me and then asked me how my dad was doing, and how he put his hand on my shoulder after I told him. Or I could write about going up to my dad’s cabin this past weekend, and how strange it was being up there without him. These are some of the things I could write about, and there are others, but it’s six a.m. now and I have to get ready for work. I have a real job, you see. This damn writing thing is just a rather silly avocation.