“Feed me!” says the creative urge. “I need a dragon quest, or a search for a golden egg, or something.”
“How about a poem?” I ask.
“Pshaw, a snack,” it cries.
“I could scratch out a song,” I offer.
“I suppose.”
“How about a tasty blog post?”
“Boring! You do that all the time.”
“All right.” I take a deep breath. “It’s a bitter cold day in outer space. Ice would form instantly on the windows, except there’s no water out there. Suddenly they hear a knock on the door.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Well, the explorers.”
“What are they exploring?”
“Outer space. Duh!”
“Yes, but why?”
“To see what’s out there. Plus, there’s some disaster going on back on Earth, and a message was sent from this area of space saying the answer is out here.”
“Better. Go on,” the creative urge urges.
“Well, one explorer says to the other, ‘Holy moly, what was that?’ He’s the Dudley Do-Right character who’s in love with the lady scientist, but she likes the bad boy pilot. It’s the sweet botanist, who keeps the plants alive and supplying oxygen, who loves Dudley. It’s a tangled web.”
“Silly and distracting. What about the knock on the door?”
“They turn on the external cameras, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone or anything out there, but the knock comes again.”
“Go on.”
“An ethereal something seeps through the door and stands there, glowing, in front of them.”
“How did it knock if it’s ethereal?”
“It just knows how to do these things.”
“Someone’s going to ask.”
“Fine. It can make itself partly solid long enough to pick up things or knock on doors.”
“How did it know that humans have a custom of knocking on doors?”
“Oh, good heavens! Don’t you know anything about suspension of disbelief?”
“I don’t believe that’s really a thing.”
I stop and stare at the creative urge. Then I look more carefully.
“Why, you’re not the creative urge at all. You’re the self-editor! Shoo! Shoo!”
“Ah, you’re just a hack and a pretender anyway,” the self-editor scowls as it rushes away.
The creative urge walks into the room, yawning.
“That was a great nap,” it says. “What did I miss?”
“Well, this ethereal something-or-other just entered the space ship and was about to introduce itself and explain about the disaster back on Earth that led to this mission.”
“I love missions into space to save the world!”
“Me, too,” says I. “So you won’t believe what happens next.”
“Try me,” says the real creative urge.
