Okay. It’s not the recovering cold.  It’s not the winter blues. It’s not a personal psychological trauma.

It’s . . . . . . . . . . .  WRITER’S BLOCK.

And, yes indeed, it might have been prompted by an upper respiratory downturn in physical energy and the wintry appearance of grays outside, not to mention the fact that we told the snow blowers we would manage the sloping drive by ourselves this year and it definitely looks problematic. But those are all subterfuges for reality.

Yes. I’m saying it now. I have writer’s block.

Indeed, I may have been initially traumatized by the need to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. I take my commitments seriously. I signed up. NaMoWriMo is a project designed to impel that into reality. But honestly. And I’m not going to whine here, but I can’t make it. Whew. I’m admitting that for the first time to myself. But I can’t make it.

And that means that I move on with – oh – about 30,000 words. Well, maybe 20,000. Not all bad. And I took what was a long short story from thirty years ago and pulled and stretched and delved and along the way fell into love with it. Not to suggest that it is publishable and worthy. But it grew and evolved into multi-layers of myself. I am tickled by its complexity. I am different today by what I know from its path and what it unearthed along the way. It made me think about my life as nothing has before.

Then the void. The doldrums.

I forced myself to sit down and write tonight in spite of the writer’s block.  Funny how the mind obstruction makes you feel as if you hadn’t a thought in your head, as if there will never again be anything to say. All blank. It’s all gone. It’s over. Done.

Then I remembered the adage that when you can’t think of a thing to say you just sit down and write. In spite of, and anyway.

I have a quote from Maya Angelou – “What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks – the cat sat on the mat, this that, not a rat. And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced I’m serious and says – Okay, okay, I’ll come.”

Come sweet muse. I’m not Maya Angelou, not even close or in the same blessed league, but I call out and ask you for skillful words and clever thoughts and ultimately the sheer fun of writing them down. And let them flow.

Amen. Om. Namaste. (I’m covering all bases.)