Once upon a time, long ago and far away, or so most fairy tales would have you believe, there has lived a princess. But, this time around, fed up with being typecast by every writer since God called into the void, “Let there be light!” this particular princess I’m going to write about got her Mojo together and cleverly found a way to whisper to this author’s muse and tell her:

“Hey, you, Muse lady, tell that damn writer of yours I want to be a space pirate, or the captain of a starship fighting invading aliens or, at the very least, a futuristic Delilah with magical powers bestowed upon me by the Fates. Anything but, you know, the dreaded Disney version or worse, the Brothers Grimm version, of a princess where I end up being eaten by the big bad wolf. You got that!”

Needless to say my Muse had something to say about my characters giving her a hard time of it there, in the dark ether of nothingness between words and sentences, muttering in turn to me about bad form and unruly behaviour of those yet to be born, and that the unborn were just that: unborn and should stay silent till given form.

Sigh!

Only in my head could it get this complicated when I sit down to write a story. What with Muses muttering about going on holiday, characters shouting to be heard that my Muse was lacking in empathy for them and their plight forever lurking in the dark corners of my mind. And then my staring at a blank screen listening to arguments of:

“I want to be called the Lady of the Red Hood, you know, not damn ‘little red riding hood!’” and “I want a laser blaster, and a crew of amazon warrior women like you saw in Xena . . .” to “Don’t have me kissing that wimpy guy, I want to be six feet tall, wear armour, and rescue the girl!”

At best, it can drive a writer to distraction, and worst, to madness.