Paused

I have been absent of late, dear readers, and I apologize. I’d like to say that my lacuna was due to being busy at work or out on a massive book tour. Sadly, this is not the case. The truth is that I simply lost the desire to write.

As I look back on it now, I suppose it was a form of depression that took hold of me. For, those of you who have been following our blog (bless your stalwart hearts) know that 2017 was a tough year hereabouts. My mother’s illness, my father’s denial, and the workplace drama all took a greater toll on my psyche than I anticipated or even understood. I have been told that that is the way of things with depression.

I had originally planned to spend the off season embroiled and submerged in my stories such that when Spring came, I would have a significant body of work to show unto the world. A draft of a novel and my completed Wild Man triptych were my goals. I would have been happy with completing one of the Wild Man stories, but I always did aim impossibly high.

And yet...

When January came and Winter plunged the temperatures down below that which mortal men could tolerate, I found myself unable...no, that’s not right...unwilling to put pen to paper or fingers to keys. My imagination, so long my friend and chief distractor, seemed to have fled my addled mind. I would stare at my notebooks with pen in hand and nothing would come. The cursor blinked mournfully at me as it rested in place.

 It seemed to me as if something inside had died.

I mourned the loss by doing...nothing. My turn at posting came and went without so much as an attempt from me. And then, another passed...and another still without my putting a competent word on screen. Oh, I agonized over it, but the motivation to do anything about it was lost. The same was true with my projects. I made a few attempts, of course, but the product was pale in comparison to what I knew I could do. So, I left it all not certain if I would ever return.

Yet,  it never truly left me. After a couple of months of sulking and being angry at things I cannot control, I began to think about my stories again. A name I read in the New Yorker that I knew I could use (I have stated my ongoing struggle with names earlier) or a plot device that, if properly tweaked, could be appropriated for my use. Woodsmoke and fir tree sap scents that would drop easily into a description of where Darby or the Wild Man live.  All this begun percolating in my mind, like a pot beginning to boil again after have cold water poured into it.

My wife and my friends have been instrumental in this recovery. Even now, Randy is withholding his post to make certain that I post first. My wife (God bless her soul) has been gently nudging me back from the brink, going so far as to buy me a new journal and pen (things she knows I can’t resist) for Valentine's. I may not be completely back to what passes for normal for me, but I am getting there. I will post again, dear readers, I will write again.