I continually refer to the Girls in the Basement as shorthand for the inexplicable  reliable-in-their-way-not-mine forces below the level of consciousness that make things happen for me, creatively. They’re my muses, my instincts, my intuitions, the things I know inarticulately and mostly not-consciously. They express themselves indirectly, but experience has taught me when something’s a signal and when something’s just the clamoring of my ego. (I still get it wrong, and if the signal scares me, I’ll ignore for as long as I can, but mostly, the system works.)

The phrase comes from Stephen King’s On Writing, only he has Boys, not Girls and, since I can’t find his description of the Boys, I can’t tell you how his differs from mine. But I’m thinking there isn’t a whole lot…