Muse or Mood?

Writing Wednesday has come 'round again, has it? I'm still not sure I'm in the best place for writing about writing, but so be it.

Actually, I'll start with a question - do you have to be in a certain mood to write, or put another way, do certain moods make it impossible for you to write? An informal poll of some of my scribble-inclined friends (I left the other Burrowers alone for this one, so don't get any ideas) seems to indicate that it's awfully personal - one writes horribly smutty things when depressed, another can't write at all, while a third can only write tragic scenes when she is herself in a very happy mood.

That's all very well for lazybutts like me who futz around and never really DO anything with the writing, but what about writers on deadlines? Even self-imposed ones like NaNoWriMo seem to get results (including, at least some of the time, for lazybutts like me), at least in terms of showing up and stringing the words together. In fact, this blog post is a really good example of the deadline forcing the work. I'm scheduled for the 4th, so I write a post on the 3rd. And since these posts are the only things I'm getting written these days (no, Facebook status updates certainly do not count), I guess that proves the power of the deadline (at least for me).

I'm not sure what I'd do if I were, say, a magazine or newspaper columnist (yeah, I know, dying breed, bear with me) who had an assignment that directly conflicted with events in my own life - can you imagine having to pen purple prose about weddings while going through a divorce, or "how to care for aging parents" if your own have recently died? I doubt journalists are much different from the rest of us in terms of just showing up and doing the job, so I'm back on the idea of the external deadline.

So, okay. I'm lazy. Guilty as charged. I guess I have to find some deadlines, huh?

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams