Racked My Brain

So yeah. It's been a while since there's been any activity on Something Different, so I thought I'd spice it up a bit. But the only thing on my spice rack was brains, so I'll spice it up with some mind.

If you think about that expression, "rack your brain," for a while it kinda doesn't make much sense, does it? It's supposed to mean thinking long and hard about something. searching your entire brain for one little scrap to think about, or to write, or to paint, or whatever else. But when you put something on a rack, it's just storage. You're putting that thing away while you're doing something else. Not using the racked item. So when you rack your brain, does that mean you're putting your thoughts to one side for however long you are doing the racking? It could be referring to practise of negative thinking, or thinking about what's not there, as opposed to what is. Or it could be referring to the Eureka effect, where if you try not to answer a question, you'll stumble into the solution by mistake.

But this can't be, because racking one's brain is usually described as a lengthy, tiresome, and only sometimes fruitful venture. There's probably some explanation behind it, one that I'm way too lazy to go out and find. Ah well. I'm a slacker, what can I say?

But this leads to the second part of my post. My brain seems to have been racked for quite a while. At least in some parts. And I mean "sitting in non-use" kind of racked. I have been writing quite a bit, a few short stories on my fiction page, regular updates on the blog, but the one thing that I really want to get back to is just... at a standstill. I'm alluding to my book, or at least the manuscript that will become my book eventually. It's maintained a fairly even few thousand words for the past month or two. No additions of anything, but at least no harsh red ink crossing off everything everywhere.

I think I might have lost my muse, whatever she/it may have been, or at least ran out of metaphorical fuel. I need a gas station in my near future. I can't run on fumes, coughing up short stories every time something catches and I start forward a bit.

Actually, on a more positive note, the short stories and posts have come more frequently lately, so my Muse might be siphoning some gas into the engine every once in a while. Let's hope for a break and an explosive week or two of mad writing.

Into A Made Up World

I made up a world. A bunch of them actually. They're all in one place, it's all canon, I assure you. They're just linked by the thinness of certain places. Not thin in a sense of physical dimensions. But a thin veil between one universe and the next.

They're not just in my mind. I believe that by the power of my imagination, somewhere an alternate universe has split off the infinite others and in it my story is taking place. It would explain why I feel like I'm chronicling actual events, and not just making it up. I get almost a flash of inspiration at times, but that inspiration might not be me, it could be a packet of information that got past one of these thin places, and into my mind.

That doesn't mean I'm not creative, no. It just means that I have the skill to see these flashes from Beyond, and the talent to write out the events in a way that will be suspenseful yet humuorous.

Either that, or I'm a raving lunatic. Wouldn't it be sweet if it was both?