Guest Post: Diana's Brain

I am Diana's brain. Diana has been asking incessantly for me to guest blog and although I am much too busy, what with running Diana's life and keeping her alive (no easy job, believe me), I finally agreed.

Being a thorough brain, as all good brains are (and please let's be clear, all brains are good brains. It's their owners who choose to act without them), it is my goal to provide insight into my inner workings, as well as discuss my grievances toward Diana and how she ignores me.

Before I proceed I would like to say, I despise Diana's abhorrent abuse of the word "awesome," her increasing use of asterisk actions (*shudder* indeed), and I firmly believe that the use of more than one exclamation point at the end of a sentence is a firm sign of a lunatic. You will see none of this today. As you can imagine, I have (forcibly) read Diana's past blog posts-- although you'll agree I haven't been allowed a big part in most of them-- and the way Diana refers to me in this very blog as, and I quote, "stupid brain," causes me significant offense. What greater insult could there be to a brain than stupidity? However, being a civilized brain, I am willing to make certain allowances for my mistress. She and I don't always connect, but my loyalty is unwavering.

I realize that Diana's consistent disrespect to me and my office stem from her frustrations with me. She thinks I'm far too uptight, here in my ivory cranium, but the truth is, to describe what I do as an enormous job is a gross understatement. A mistress like Diana, with her constant daydreaming and being here inside her head with me more often than she's out there in the world, well she gives me no peace. Compound this with her obstinate refusal to listen to me, and my work is made immeasurably more difficult. Sleep, I tell her, making her lids heavy, but she drinks coffee, too besotted with her current Story to listen to me. I send her hunger pains, yet she can't be induced away from whichever love affair she's in the middle of to think about feeding us. Not to mention what she feeds us! With all of this happening, is it any wonder my frontal lobe is too cluttered for messages to get through to her? Indeed I tell her where the keys are, and I remind her to charge her phone, and that her aunt's birthday is coming up, but my messages can't get through when she leaves me in such a state!

Oh wretched existence, to be so ignored! 

My grievance list continues, for her biological neglect isn't the worst of it. I want desperately to help her in her life. I want her to be happy, and I care about her future as a writer. Yet she ignores me when I tell her to outline before writing a story. She ignores me when I tell her to stop revising Twists of Fate and give it a little distance-- for goodness' sake, she only just finished the book a month ago! It would be wiser, so much wiser, to rewrite Wishmaker, or do a nice final revision on Sinister Charms, but no... she keeps going back to Twists of Fate. I've never seen her so enamored. Bah! Fine, ignore me Diana! Ignore your own brain! You've gotten along quite well without me so far, haven't you? And that was sarcasm, my dear, in case you missed it!

Doesn't Diana realize that the only way to get to her precious stories is through me? Never mind her muse-- don't make me laugh! Diana may enjoy her muse's company (when her royal highness bothers showing up), but Diana also doesn't coddle the silly thing. If Diana and I agree on only one thing, it's that her muse is not to be counted upon. Neither of us understand her muse, flighty thing that she is, and we definitely don't wait for her to show up before beginning our work.

But I must admit... a part of me is a tad worried that she's listening to my nemesis, her muse. I won't say Diana's muse is worthless, but she is most definitely a lazy diva. Yes, I said it! Muse, if you're reading this, which I doubt, please take a moment from your bon-bon eating existence and prove me wrong!

But enough about her. The muse and I are seldom on speaking terms.

Back to the matter at hand. Diana's future as a writer. It's all well and good to have torrid love affairs with story after story (and there have been many. You know what they say, for every story an author's completed, there's at least three skeleton stories in her closet-- whether she writes them or not is immaterial. She's thinking about them! I'm her brain for crying out loud!), but when will Diana settle down and get to the business of querying? Yes, she's gone down that road before, and yes it's the PC thing to say that a writer in today's modern world doesn't need to query to be happy, but I know Diana inside and out. Having illicit affairs with story after story isn't enough for her. I can see from the gleam in her optic nerve that she has ambition. She wants more than just the rush of writing a story. She wants to be a working author.

In conclusion, I urge you all to think about your brains from time to time, how overworked they are, how thankless their job can be. Banging upon your skull and blaming us for your problems will only induce us to exact retribution and give you a massive headache. And please, please, refrain from telling jokes regarding zombies. We all know what they eat. I fail to see the hilarity in listening to my mistress laugh as someone moans "brains" on that insipid thing called Twitter.

Thank you for reading my side of things. For your sake, I hope you are a wiser master-or-mistress of your own brain, and that you actually defer to your brain's intelligence on a consistent basis, unlike my mistress, who-- well, let's just say has a mind of her own.