The evening after the night that went before

AKA Plans vs. Life vs. The Muse in a Royal Rumble match

Author

Tracey Byrnes
March 02, 2025

“The best-laid plans” and all those cliched sayings exist for a reason, a reminder I received multiple times on Friday, the last day of February.

Wake up at 3:00 AM? Not planned, but I rolled with it. Work through the day? Sure, that was on my agenda.
–Don’t think about how you’ll pay for this later…

Attend an online workshop I registered for? Done deal despite it starting when I was fourteen hours into my day and beginning to wonder how much longer my eyes would function.
–Great workshop. I loved all the information and ideas I took away from it.

7:00(ish) PM. Sixteen hours in. Back to work after a quick bite to eat. I had a project I wanted to wrap up but promised myself I would stop whenever I was too tired to stay awake.
–No sense in risking adding multiple lines of zzzzzzzz, sssssssssss, 3333333333, or other random letters to the manuscript. Been there, done that, saw the sequels, got the T-shirt. I’m good.

10:30(ish) PM. Major attack of the sleepies. It didn’t take much for them to get me to shut down my computer and get ready for bed.
–Ahhhh, sleep…finally. Except…

<cue dramatic music and visions of squirrels springing awake to start an insta-rave>

[My muse]: Oh, hi there! I know you’re tired and were about to zonk out, but I just conjured this GREAT opening for a story you had no intention of writing anytime soon, if ever. We gotta write it down! No, now! I’m not gonna shut up until you do! Who cares that it’s probably not in a genre you normally write in? Write it anyway! Use it as bonus content. Submit it to an anthology. We don’t care! Just write if you want to sleep anytime soon!

[Me, grumbling internally]: Seriously? You’re gonna pull this on me now? Really? It can’t wait until later?

[My muse]: No! We gotta do this NOW!

[Me]: <sighs in defeat, grabs tablet, opens a blank doc, and starts writing>

If you’re exhausted just reading that exchange with my muse, welcome to my world. 😂

I know better than to fight an internal war I can’t win. That’s why I caved and started writing despite knowing it would keep me up. A little over 1,400 words later, my muse simmered down enough to let me sleep—at around 1:00 AM on Saturday, March 1.

Have I mentioned that my muse can be a diabolical witch? No? Well, now you know.
–I can feel her plotting her next endeavor… Let’s hope it involves one of the WIPs already in progress, not another trip down the rabbit hole. Or a return visit to the unplanned story with a quirky working title I don’t wish to divulge..