The Muses fail me

I also write fiction, most of which is stillborn.

Here are a few of last year’s false starts.

I’d had as much as I could stand of Art and Libby Tungsten and of Tungstens generally when “Brainy” Tungsten strode into the parlor.

You’re probably curious what the insufferable “Brainy” will do to ruin the narrator’s good temper. Alas, this character is a dead end. Having come upon the scene, “Brainy” just stands in place, tantalizing us with his name, refusing to confirm or discredit it.

Another passage:

It was rainy and bleak. I’d been crisscrossing the city for hours and didn’t know where to get off the bus. The neighborhoods looked rough. To dismount might be fatal. It would be wetting, at least.

“You can’t ride all night,” the driver said. “You must get down.”

“I don’t know where to.”

“Then do it here.”

The half-dozen other passengers were stony-faced.

Note the pared-downness of the Bulwer-Lyttonian opening. What to do when inspiration presents itself in the form of plagiarism? Make it more prosaic, e.g.:

Should I stay alive or not?

That time was both very bad and very good.