Metaverse Muses: The Oracle

A common meme passed from writer to writer is that you can’t wait on inspiration to write. Supposedly, you must plant your butt in the chair and bang out drivel until something useful shows up on the page.

I don’t see that either waiting for inspiration or pouring out pages of glop to find the good stuff is terribly efficient.  One is a static method of waiting on the muse and the other active. It’s all waiting. Why can’t you just go out and hunt down the inspiration you need? Or, my preferred method, conjure inspiration from pixels.

Not all of my muses look the same. I think I have an army of them stashed away in the metaverse to call up as needed. There’s nothing like creating their home and appearance to catch  muse’s attention. Once you have that, it’s not long before they start offering input.

This is the Oracle. She loves learning. She can’t resist the lure of new knowledge. She digs into the past and applies those lessons to current trends in science and technology, predicting where those might lead in the future. She treasures her solitude and her books. I’m spending quite a bit of time with her as I work on my current project, The Wildlings Tale. The protagonist, Virginia, would be right at home in the oracle’s tower.

Spending time with the Oracle in her retreat is like peering into the soul of my character. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a 3D world must be at least 1000 cubed. When you can find your character there, that’s where the magic lives. Where inspiration takes hold.  Words spill out faster than you can type.

If you’d like to visit Nara and her story worlds, go here to learn how to login. Follow Nara on Facebook, Twitter, or G+ to contact her directly for assistance.

Credits:
Setting is the Wizard’s Retreat by artist Avia Bonne
Oracle’s Hair and outfit by author  Shannan Albright
Photographs by Nara Malone