I guess a little bit of both. I've never really been able to write to request. In the past, someone has made a suggestion or come up with an idea for a story for me to write and just by sheer co-incidence the Muse has sparked some interest at just the right time to enable me to do so. But equally there are lots of times when she hasn't and that request has never been answered.
I never plot or plan a story ahead of time. I get a snatch of dialogue suddenly running through my head as I wash the dishes or see some interplay between my character as though I'm watching it on the TV screen while I'm in the bath and I'll jot that down if it interests me. If I get enough such ideas and they connect, a story - or at least the genesis of one - is born and I'll have a file to work on.
I sometimes have a vague idea - or even a solid one - of how I'd like a story to proceed, and often by the time I'm halfway through (especially if there's an aplot that needs to be logical) I'll have a set of scenes I need to write, but they rarely end up the way I'd planned, other than when they need to be for the story to make sense. And quite frequently the Muse will take off in a new direction I definitely hadn't planned, leaving me to scrabble around trying to incorporate what she's suddenly come up with and still get the scene back on track to where it started from.
Masques taught me that I
can work to a deadline though if I have to and come up with the goods. In fact that was something of a major revelation for me last year. I couldn't believe how often I ended up with a segment to post on the day it needed to be posted. Often at the eleventh hour, just when I was in despair of ever finding my way. It was an exhilarating, fascinating and fun experience - but it was also deeply scary. <g>
The same thing happened recently with Epiphany - I did make all but one of my deadlines, but it was a close call at the start. Though once the Muse got fired up she pretty much came through with gold stars and didn't abandon me again until it was finished.
So I have something of a love/hate relationship with posting a story unfinished and having to trust to the Muse to get me the rest to deadline. On the one hand, lately it's given me some of my best writing experiences in years, but on the other it's enormously stressful and I'm always terrified I'll fall off the high wire.
Still...I'm pretty sure I'll end up doing it again though. <g>
LabRat
