Muses?  Um, I think they’re on aisle 13.

Non-writers like the word “inspiration.”  My guess is that most writers don’t so much.  I know I don’t.  ”What’s your inspiration?”  ”What inspired you?”  ”Ooooh, you live in Italy, that must really be great for inspiration.”

Well, actually Katherine (Applegate) and I are leaving Italy.  We are dragging the two kids, the two dogs and the cat away from stunningly beautiful Tuscany to stunningly dull Orange County, California.  Why?  Are we expecting to find a muse to inspire us in Southern California?  No.  (The last muse in Southern California was killed during the wildfire season of 1997.  Her siblings had died earlier from mudslides, smog and earthquakes.)  What we’re expecting to find is high-speed internet, book stores, an Apple store and a Target.  Each of those mundane things is more important to me as a writer than my lovely view out over the rolling vineyards.

Writing — at least for the two of us — is a job.  We get up every day and do it.  Emphasis on the active verb “do.”  There’s not a lot of waiting for inspiration.  Mostly there’s a lot of typing. I don’t really know where ideas come from, but I know that once I have an idea I have to do a lot of planning and researching and emailing and negotiating and always lots of typing.  

I have to know what’s on the shelves at my nearest chain bookstore and what they’re selling at the indies.  Those shelves are real estate I’m hoping to claim.   I need my computer and phones to work so that I can both email and talk on the phone.  Not some of the time, all of the time — an impossible dream in rural Tuscany.  I need to be able to pick up a bottle of Advil, a ream of paper, a carton of milk and a t-shirt in fifteen minutes and all in one place.  Living the rural Italian life that’s four different stops at four different stores, all with different opening and closing times, and with nowhere to park.  The process can take literally five times longer than it does in the States.  Yeah, it sounds charming, but not when you have pages due.  Then it’s just a huge waste of precious time.  Tick tock, people, I have work to do.  

I know all this sounds trivial.  Shouldn’t the romance of Italy trump the convenience of the States?  Yeah, for about seven months, which is how long we’ve been here.  After that I really, really, really just need things to be easy.  

I need an Office Depot.  A Target.  A Wendy’s.  A Walgreens.  I need straight roads that go directly from where I am to where I want to be.  I want a DVR so I can time-shift.  I want my iPhone to work.  I want to pay my bills online or with a phone call, not after a fifteen minute wait in some overheated post office.  I want to drive with a cup of coffee, not pull over at a bar for an espresso.  I want to pick up a phone or send an email and get actual answers to my questions.  I want all the data, all the access, all the convenience, all the time.  

I will have a lot more time for inspiration if I can waste less time being charmed.