As you can imagine, a recent snow storm and a tree branch shooting through my roof and bedroom ceiling flattened my muse wafer thin. Today the sun is warm and shiny. All over town people are clearing roofs, sawing, grinding, or piling up enough fallen branches to build a complete forest. Good times.
My muse has recovered herself nicely, as always. Somehow, my life takes a hit; her life takes a hit. The mother and daughter in my young adult novel in progress are in big, big trouble. Stress has chipped away at mother, leaving daughter in charge at 17. Sheesh. Better get on that right away.
When I say free mind, creative mind, I don't mean free from trouble. While a bad life event can cause enough stress to paralyze ones mind, it's only temporary. Once the crisis has eased, what you have left is a bad thing that happened. The mind hasn't let go of the event, it has just stored it.
So, when you write a novel, you need to create trouble for your characters again and again until they have to do something or change something to survive. That's when your mind is free to refer to its file of bad things that happen to people. I don't know about you, but I'll be able to refer to my bad things file for the rest of my life.
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