I don’t really want to go back and look at how long it’s been since I sat down to Write (yes with a pretentious capital ‘W’). I know it’s been months, but to be fair it’s really been years. Sometimes I look back to my best writing days and see it as another lifetime. A human life is made of many little lifetimes, overlapping yet often so distinct as to be held as a perfect memory separate from the whole.

For me, the little lifetime was six years. I locked myself in a room nearly each and every day and wrote for several hours. I wrote two novels, several stories, a few stubs of tales as yet untold. And yet, millions of words are not enough to be a writer.

It’s true that writing is hard work. Frankly, it is impossible to come day after day to the page and expect to release your best work. You must take what the writing gives and be happy that it gives at all. You must also show up.

Some writers, when faced with the prospect of not writing, will say things like:

“I would rather stop breathing than stop writing.”

“I would die if I wasn’t writing.”

“I cannot live without writing.”

But the reality is that you will not die nor will you stop breathing. You won’t stop living or stop feeling alive. You will still be a writer, you will simply not be writing.

This may sound sad and depressing but not as bad as you might think. In fact, it becomes rather pleasant after awhile because you stop worrying about all those things which only exist in your mind. You stop tending the universes there and the characters and the stories.

Not writing, after a time, is as pleasant as a warm bath.

As I said above, I’ve been in the tub a long while now. My skin is well past pruning. It’s withered and white. Soft and rubbery. My muscles are weak from buoyant caresses. My bones do not feel capable of holding my weight, and oh how that weight has grown.

Yes, it is pleasant in the bath. Pleasant and dreadfully dull.

Getting out of the tub, especially after you’ve been in it for awhile, is a painful experience. First, you must gird yourself against the atmospheric effects. Then you heave yourself out of the water, for there is really no graceful way to exit a bath. Even though you have prepared yourself mentally, you’ll find that your limbs have forgotten how to support your weight. A curse for the chill that wasn’t in the air five seconds before and a hustle for the towel. You’re focus is entirely on the goal of drying off quickly all sense of relaxation gone.

If you think about this, you’ll stay in the tub a bit longer. You’ll use your toes to fiddle with the nobs and eek out that last bit of hot water from the tank. You’ll sink below the water till it nearly touches the edge of your nose, knowing that if you fully submerge you’ll be freezing when you come up for air.

This is what the latter stages of not writing feel like. You know the chill is spreading. The water has long since stopped steaming. You wouldn’t be surprised if ice began to form near the edges of the tub, slowly closing in on you, forcing you to pull yourself into a tight embrace around your fear of emerging.

But like the warm bath, you know that even your fear cannot last. The water will be flat and cold as the grave. Your eyes, held shut against the inevitable, will open wide and you will clamber from the tub like a scalded monkey. Teeth chattering, you’ll wonder why the hell you ever got in there in the first place.

And maybe, if you’re smart, you’ll get back to work.

This post is more about writing than you might think.

Yesterday, I watched the launch of STS-135. Maybe you did too.

Before the launch I texted my son to make sure he was watching too. It was just a few minutes before lift-off and he scrambled to make sure everyone in the house was watching.

Later that night, I asked him what he thought about it. He thought it was sad because the program was over. I asked him what he thought about private companies going into space. He said, “I don’t think it’s going to happen.” I asked why, and he replied, “Because there’s no one to advertise to.”

What Ideas Are We Giving To The Next Generation?

This is NASA’s picture of STS-1 lifting off on April 12th, 1981. I remember it clearly. Do you?

What I remember most about STS-1, besides the white fuel tank, is being excited about space and the beginning of a grand voyage of human exploration and adventure. It was an idea that grew from the Apollo program, which itself had inspired an earlier generation. It was a gift of the best sort. The gift of an idea that we could do something even bigger than the last generation. That we could be more as human beings…

And now, with STS-135 zipping around for a final few victory laps around this blue globe of ours, I’m left wondering just what the next generation must think of all this, what they must think of us. What ideas do they see out there in the world today? What dreams have we sown by our own actions? How have we encouraged the next generation to dream bigger than the last generation?

The answer, I think, lies in the clear-headed response of a 12 year-old boy: In space, no one can hear you advertise.

So, What Exactly Have We Done?

I think it’s a fair question.

We’ve solved none of the pressing problems of the past. War is rampant and eternal. The energy crisis is worse than ever. We’ve destroyed much of our sense of community through aggressive polarization, and reduced our sense of humanity to the petty needs of instant gratification. We may have access to all of the knowledge in the world in the palm of our hands, but we no longer have the will to bend the laws of nature to our imaginations.

In short, we seem to have chosen a path of apathy instead of one of adventure. We’ve chosen to become static instead of dynamic. We are squabbling amid the wreckage of a civilization that has not yet died, creating evermore selfish systems in commerce, in politics, and in life.

But I think that all is not so bleak as it appears. If we put our minds to it, we can be more than this one moment in time. We can reclaim our dreams and reinvigorate the spirit of adventure which has defined the best in human achievement throughout history.

The Human Spirit Is Not So Easily Defeated

My younger son and I talked about the shuttle launch too. He was excited about the roar of rockets and the smoke and the flames. He talked like a boy who is seven about the majesty of such an incredible achievement, which is to say there was lots of “wow” and “cool” and whooshing whoops.

His excitement was infectious and I told him about the first shuttle launch. I told him how we watched at school and what it meant to us. We talked about space then and what lies beyond, and then we set about killing zombies because that’s what we do on Friday nights.

So while we can be sad about the closing of this chapter in the space program, we must be ready to write the next. Those who follow us are counting on us to live our dreams. We must supply them with nothing but the very best examples of our imaginations brought to reality through the willpower of the human spirit.

We must fight through the malaise of the moment. We must create. Because it’s not enough to simply shake our heads and walk away… We must repay the deficit dreams we leave for those who follow.

Yesterday, I was frustrated, pessimistic. I was disappointed and pissed off. Today is different.

I’ve taken steps to ensure that the coffee is up to snuff, but you can’t really avoid it. The down times, I mean, not the coffee. Problems with coffee can always be avoided. You just dump out the pot and try again. With writing, not so much.

When I’ve been Not Writing for awhile, I tend to get melancholic. You might recognize these symptoms in yourself.

You take a favorite book down and read some words. You think, “How the hell did this writer find the time to do this?” Or perhaps you say, “I live in a different age. No one will appreciate this sort of work today. Philistines!” And then you slam the book closed and console yourself with a nice little rant or maybe just work on your own personal storm cloud.

All of which is really Not Writing, isn’t it?

Of course it is, but it’s also part of the process. You let it come and have its say and then you let it fade away. Then, you begin the work.

The body retains the memory of what it has done before and so does the mind. The pathways may be a bit overgrown but they’re there. You just need to practice a bit to get back into the swing of things.

For me, that practice involves writing but also reading and listening. I listen to podcast stories while mowing the lawn. I read books with honest-to-god plots. These are the things that will spark your imagination in a fruitful way.

Well, that and extremely strong coffee.

Six Steps to Returning to Writing

I went way back into my notes this morning, and I found the same pattern repeated over and over. The fits and starts are easy to identify. They’re usually punctuated at either end by some external distraction that’s taken over my life. I’m sure the same could be said for anyone. In any case, I also noticed that I had developed a series of habits that led to successful runs in my writing life:

1. Show up – This is the first step. You must appear at the desk daily. You know this. You also know it is not optional. There is nothing more important than this.
2. Purge – This is the second step. You must put your hands on the keyboard (or pen to paper) and purge yourself. You cannot get beyond yourself if you are stuck on yourself.
3. Write – Once you have purged, you must write. You must not break or go wandering about. You must not take the relief of purging as a sign you are done. Write.
4. Stop – When you are returning to writing, it is important that you stop before you are written out. You wouldn’t try to run a marathon or even a 5K if you hadn’t trained. You’ll hurt yourself, or at the very least burn out the desire to show up the next day.
5. Be Patient – I’ve written for over 20 years, and still I have problems with this one. If I return from a break, I expect my work to come off like it did before. It won’t. It may never be the same. Depending on how you view your work, that may be a comfort. The thing is to be patient and take what the writing will give. You will return to form (some form) after a time.
6. Show Up – You begin the cycle again… Perhaps, you’ll think I’m cheating here by repeating the first step, but this is part of the method. When you leave the desk and step to the door, do you turn out the light knowing that you won’t return the next day? Leave the light on, if only in your mind. Remember that this is a process, a habit. This is something you know how to do, but you have to commit to it first and foremost.

A final word about planning… By design, I have not included planning in the six steps. Many of you may wonder why. After all, isn’t planning an essential part of writing? Yes, it is, but we are not writing just yet. We are returning to writing after a long layoff. If you do not show up and you do not purge and you do not write, you will spend your life planning and not executing. Ultimately, writing is keeping your ass in the saddle. Get yourself into that habit first.

I am reading an essay I’ve read many times before. It’s a travel piece, but it’s also a discourse on philosophy an exposition of the human soul in all its basic forms as told through the lens of a journey from war to sunshine.

How is it, that when we read a piece like this, one that we’ve tread over many times… we find ourselves caught up in just a few words that seem to have slipped our attention. This turns into a sudden realization, a spark of profound insight which ignites the imagination and calls us to do the bidding of the universe or in some cases to bend the universe to our will.

Or, it could be that this coffee is a bit too strong.

Still, the words are beautiful. The author wraps history, philosophy, and anthropology into a portrait of an entire people. It’s a romanticized version, but it is obviously quite stirring.

I am writing about a series of essays by D.H. Lawrence, but in particular The Lemon Gardens. I’ve read this essay at least half a dozen times, mostly because the title pleases me and I have a idealized image of estate Lawrence describes between musings on the nature of the Italian soul. You might read the essay and think it is pure pap, but that’s because you don’t see what I see. If I were a better writer, I would take the time to describe this to you. I would certainly not tell you outright my feelings about the piece. I would never be so direct, though in fact I would be precise by the manner of my investigation.

This is how Lawrence goes about telling the reader what he wants them to feel. He gently slips the emotion into your consciousness by framing it within a distraction. I imagine that if he were to put the technique into words, it would sound a little like this:

“Look at this thing. I tell you something about it, which is actually something about yourself. You will not hear it that way because I have not addressed it to you directly, but you will feel a kinship. As a result, it will come to be a part of you.”

I doubt that Lawrence would ever be so direct. I doubt that any writer worth their pen would be so direct. Thankfully, I am not that sort of author.

You might ask why I felt compelled to write this little piece today. I am curious as well. It is a sunny morning. The rains of the past few days have left everything smelling fresh and slightly damp. There is a cool breeze that comes and goes. I have the aforementioned coffee which, upon further reflection, really does need to be stronger. I should be content to sit and read one of my favorite essays in the languorous way I imagine I used to read on days like this some time ago.

But I’m not.

I’m not content to merely read the essay for the umpteenth time. I am not content to merely dream that I am Lawrence standing on the terrace of the Church of San Tommaso. I am not content at all really. I am restless and and annoyed. I am annoyed at the coffee, yes, but I am annoyed to be Aware.

For awhile now, I’ve been Not Writing. This is the serious sort of Not Writing which involves no actual writing. There are no words that need writing. No thoughts that need sorting out. There is nothing.

I’ve known about this for some time, but I’ve let it slide into a state of being that comes from allowing distractions to pile up and clutter the mind. They are the worst sort of distractions too. They are distractions against which little or nothing can be done. They are disactions.

Awareness of distractions like this could easily lead to anger and rash action. It can lead to changes which are dangerous and destructive. It can also lead to a manic burst of creativity. I don’t believe any of this is really helpful to any writer.

Writing is a long game. It is measured in persistence and constant progress toward the goal. Flashes of insight (hopefully brilliant) may puncture the wall from time to time, but generally speaking it is slow, diligent work that leads to the creation of something worthwhile.

The same could be said for reading an essay like The Lemon Gardens. It is a pleasant piece which could be read quickly and enjoyed, but to be appreciated fully it must be read slowly with a considered eye.

Oh if only!

Today, I’m 480 feet above sea level, and give or take 156 feet, you will find me at 39.983501°N 83.045066°W. This is my writing chair. I rarely get the chance to sit here anymore but when I do it feels like I’m taking my first breaths.

Perhaps this has happened to you. You get involved with something. You get distracted. You lose your place and when you wake up you’re driving 80 miles an hour down the highway with a scuba diver, a muskrat, and four mermaids in the backseat. Well, to be fair, if that last part happened, you probably drank a Four Loko last night and your car is significantly larger than mine, but I digress.

Distraction is part of the business. You can’t avoid it no matter how vigilant you remain. It will happen. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to fight it off or build habits and practices that protect against its whimsical charms. Yes, by all means, do that, but realize that distraction happens. When it does, don’t dwell on it. The longer you hold onto a distraction, the more likely it is to become a wall. The key thing is to never let go.

Never letting go is one of the things I’ve learned about writing. Of course, first and foremost is sit down and shut up. You’ll find it is so much easier to write when you are actually writing and not talking about writing or walking about and dreaming about writing. Second is be selfish. Writing takes time, time that you could give over to other pursuits or someone else’s interests. Be selfish and take that time for yourself and your work. Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, writing does not happen in the margins. Still, the third and perhaps most crtitical thing is never let go.

Life is not going to make things easy for you. That’s the whole point. Life is supposed to be hard. It is supposed to be a struggle. If it is easy, then you’re probably floating on the surface or just going with the flow. In which case you should remember that only dead fish go with the flow, even very successful dead fish.

But it’s difficult to write when you’re underwater… I know, I know. Yet, note that I said difficult, not impossible.

The fact of the matter is that you will probably have to learn to write underwater if you are ever going to get anything done. It is as unavoidable as life, which is to say that things will happen and you will get distracted. You may stay submerged for a very long time, in which case a metaphor like this one will start to sound pretty good to your oxygen-starved mind. Don’t worry too much about that, just keep swimming.

I may be in my writing seat for the first time in months, but I’m 480 feet above sea level. I’m sitting in the sun. I’m writing… And maybe, with just a little oxygen, I might write something more coherent than this post.

Sometimes the New Words are the best words. Sometimes the New Words are the worst words. Sometimes, you just need to write the New Words and you need to write them fast. This is one of those times.

If I’m doing it right, the New Words won’t even come clearly into focus as my fingers fly across the keyboard. I’ll make mistakes. Mistakes in grammar. Mistakes in spelling. I’ll make mistakes in judgement and totally break every rule. I won’t give a damn, because these are the New Words and the New Words demand to be written regardless of whether they fit or are beautiful or sensitive or funny or any other adjective you care to throw in their direction.

The New Words don’t wait politely for the writer to put them down in cautious order. The New Words don’t wait to be edited. They don’t wait to be censored. The New Words have things to do and there is no time to wait. The New Words are in no uncertain terms without an agenda except for their deep and powerful need to be written.

The New Words are to be feared.

Every writer has two days they fear more than any other: the day the words refuse to come and the day the words refuse to be stopped. I’ve been through both.

The day the words stop is frightening at first and then it is somehow comforting. It is as if the proverbial weight has been lifted and you are free to be someone other that a writer. You are free to have conversations without secretly recording every word or gesture for future use. You are free to move through life without looking for the hidden plot structures that run through our society. You peer into dark alleys and see garbage instead of goblins. You go into the forest and you only see the dead leaves instead of the hidden graves of the dead.

This is only a temporary state because the day the words refuse to stop is lurking out there. The day is coming when everything suddenly bursts forth as a story and it’s all nothing but New Words flowing over you and crushing everything you thought you suddenly found important. The New Words make a misery of your Anything-But-Writing life and demand every last minute from you. The New Words make you tap your pencil incessantly. The New Words make you impatient for the lights to change. They make you want to stand up and scream at the top of of your lungs for everyone to just shut the hell up because you’ve got some damn important things to put down on paper and you can’t have all these minds and words and lives intruding on the stream of the addictive and painful New Words.

This is the day every writer fears even when they don’t realize they should be scared. This is the day when you go into work and immediately leave. This the day you might never come home. This is the day that you know will end at some point but that you hope never does. This is the day the New Words remind you of the elemental force that you can employ when sufficiently jacked up on sleep and caffeine and the creative desire that pours off of your mind in sheets of white hot prose.

This is the day of the New Words and it will eventually end. When it ends, you have to return to the hard work of writing every day. You have to remind yourself why it is you do what you do… Why you get up early enough to be yesterday or stay up late enough to be tomorrow. Why your hands hurt but you keep on typing. Why you can’t stop hearing every word that everyone says. This is why you do what you do — you do it for the words, those beautiful and precious and deadly New Words.

I’m not going to bore you with tales of what I have and haven’t done. I’m not going to justify the maybes and the if-onlys with a brief sentence of hope or conciliation. I’m not going to accept the halfness of pretending to write while only continuing to foster the moments of half-baked dreams…

I’m just going to write the New Words and show up again tomorrow to see what happens.

NaNoWriMo has come and gone and I’ve got around 6,000 words of the 50K, but really I stopped writing after the first few days. It wasn’t some gradual fade either. It was a full on, dead stop, right in mid-sentence.

Not only didn’t I make it, I hardly tried.

The easiest reason to give is work. It’s the reason most people give and I would certainly be within my rights to do so. After all, it’s not like we’re lollygagging. Still, I think that’s the easy out for me. Over the years, I’ve worked lots of crazy jobs under tight deadlines and still managed to get my writing time in.

Writing is about showing up, and I haven’t been showing up.

If I added up all the words I’ve written in the last year, it wouldn’t amount to much more than a week’s output of my former writing self. Still, even though I’m not putting down words, it doesn’t mean I’m not writing. I’ve had ideas for stories and books. I still get excited when I think about getting to the keyboard. I still haunt the bookstores and hear the tales calling to me from the stacks.

I’m still writing.

There are some people who will say that I’m kidding myself, that I’m not really writing. I don’t really care about that. Frankly, those people are the same people who are likely to tell you that story X, Y, or Z is awful or that you’ll never be a writer or that even if you are a writer you’ll never make a living at it. These are the same people who will push you down in the gutter and tell you to get back up again too.

Fuck those people.

Writing is about showing up every day. This is true. Writing is also about looking at the world a little differently than most people. It’s about looking into the deep “why’s” of the world. It’s about ancient patterns that persist across the whole of human history. Writing is about a single moment and what it means to one very particular person. Writing is about song and tears and the red hot passions that lead people to love and kill each other. Writing is about humanity, and I haven’t stopped being human just yet.

I’m still writing. How about you?

This is the cover of the book. This is exactly what it would look like in the bestseller section at Borders or B&N if a crazy person printed it through Lulu.com and left on the shelf with a half-eaten bakery item of their choice.

I’m going to do something stupid.

Isn’t it nice when you get a warning like that? I really wish that more people would take this approach in life. It would help smooth over so many uncomfortable situations where both parties know that something truly idiotic is about it happen but neither is capable of acknowledging it.

There are some stories you are proud of and some not so much. There are some stories that you just have to write and put away in a drawer and hope beyond all hope that no one will ever find. For me, The Madness of Ants is just such a story. So of course, I am going to put it right out here where everyone can see it.

This all started as part of my experiment in digital publishing. I wanted to try a book-length bit of fiction, and since I only have two novels I figured I’d start with the first.

Wow.

You know, I’ve said many times that this book is terrible but in preparing it for the Kindle I found that it is even worse than I remember. Well, there’s nothing for it now but to get on with it. Here we go…

The Original Sin

To begin, The Madness of Ants (TMOA) is a book not a story. It is only a book because it has 59K words and that the words are written in a language people can read. It is not a book because it is particularly interesting or engaging.

It is a book because it is my first novel.

Almost 16 years ago, I spent a summer writing the first novel I would actually finish. That in itself is something of an accomplishment and I’m proud of the fact that I did it. The work itself though is really a study in everything that a first time novelist can do wrong.

• Surrealism
• Obscenity
• Aping the styles of literary authors
• Wild plot twists
• Total lack of plot (yes, you can have both)

About the only thing I didn’t do is plagiarize, but considering how many ideas I stole from other writers I suppose it would be fair to heap that sin on the pile.

Original Sin

So why am I publishing this book at all?

It’s a fair question. After all, the book is so horrible that no one should be allowed to read it. But then, every writer has something like this in their closet, hard drive, etc. It is their Original Sin. The work they finished but cannot be proud of. The work that haunts their waking moments for no reason other than it was the first reason they started down the path.

Lately, I’ve not been writing at all. Even worse, I’ve gone weeks without even thinking about writing. Then, when I have a moment to myself, I wonder just what the hell happened to the guy who got up at 5AM every day to write. I wonder what happened to the guy who sequestered himself with his words and his characters and wrote thousands of words each day.

Eventually, I come around to thinking about the work I’ve done, as most writers do. I dust off a manuscript. I look deep inside to find some gleam, a gem, a reason…

But this practice rarely produces anything resembling inspiration.

Research shows acquiring a thing only give us half the pleasure of holding onto it. In other words, we’re stubborn as hell once we’ve got hold of something. It is twice as painful to lose something than it is pleasurable to acquire it in the first place.

I think this is the real truth of a writer’s Original Sin, and it probably applies to a lot more than just writing.

So, to answer the question, I am publishing this book so that I can forget about it and move on.

Why You Shouldn’t Read This Book

It should be fairly obvious that the book is really bad. What’s worse is that sixteen years of holding it in have given the book more gravitas than it deserves by a hundredfold or more. Still, long time readers of this site are undoubtedly curious and no warning whatsoever will keep them from reading the thing.

So, here is a brief list of reasons why you might not want to read this book:

• You are offended by obscenity in all forms.
• You are put off by incessant navel gazing.
• You are filled with rage when reading political discourse.
• You dislike stories where there is an excessive amount of drinking.
• You hate it when writers ape the styles of more famous writers who are only famous for being infamous.
• You loathe pretentiousness.
• You generally believe that anyone under the age of 25 should never be allowed to hold a pen.

This is not meant to be a complete list. No, not by any means. I am certain that readers of this book will find many reasons to dislike it. I hope you will share those reasons in the comments.

The Madness of Ants will soon be available in the Kindle store. However, because it is such a bad book, I feel awful about selling it. So, I’ve produced both the Kindle (mobi) and ePub version here. If you wish to inflict a PDF on yourself, I can make that format available too but be careful what you wish for… A PDF version is now available as well!

The Madness of Ants (ePub)
The Madness of Ants (Kindle – mobi)
The Madness of Ants (PDF)

It should come as no surprise that one of my characters is a novelist. This character, Burt Thompson, is a rough, burly man. Sort of like Ernest Hemingway crossed with Hunter S. Thompson. And yes, that’s where his last name came from…

Burt is the central figure in my second novel, a book called Revisions, which is basically a play more than it is a novel.

Can this get any more complicated? Of course! I’m writing about writing. It can become terribly complex and essentially meaningless.

Or, as Burt would put it:

Just talking about writing is a little like having sex with a potato. It’s strange, pointless, and bound to be a bit uncomfortable no matter how you slice it. Only an aficionado can understand it, and sadly I’m one of them.

More than once during the journey of this site I’ve thought about shutting it down, moving on from the art of writing about writing without writing. But here I am once more, tapping out a missive to the ether and wondering just what it is that draws me to this strange practice.

Certainly, I have stories to write. I have two novels in draft and maybe three or four stories that are in a similar state. I also have a notebook of ideas that need some serious attention. There are always more stories to write, more characters asking me to give them voice.

Of course, I do enjoy a good ramble. Much of what I do here is just stream of consciousness dreaming. You can tell from the typos and perhaps the random potatoes.

So why this ramble?

Burt Thompson has been on my mind a lot of late. Not his novel, but the man as a character, or really an acquaintance (one can hardly call him a friend, he’s a bit acerbic). Though maybe it is more the premise of Burt Thompson that I am drawn to at the moment, a prolific writer who fell upon wordless times.

I’m not entirely sure, which is why I am here writing about it. I suppose this is what draws most of us to writing when we least feel like it. We have questions and only our fingers on the keys can draw out the answers.

Well, it’s either that or potatoes, and frankly, I’m with Burt on that subject.

How often do you find yourself surprised to be writing and how did you get there?

As some of you know, I’ve been living in limbo this past year. Here and there, but mostly there… which is a fancy way of saying I haven’t been living anywhere.

Some writers dream of this sort of isolation. They look at their busy lives and think about the struggle they endure trying to find time for their craft. They see proverbial greener grass in the personal space and silence of being alone and far away from everything else.

But, there is more to this game than just finding the opportunity to write. I won’t list out all the places where my pages have fallen, but let’s just say I’ve done this before and I should have known better.

It’s true that during the last year I’ve written some things. I even published a story. However, it wasn’t writing like I know writing to be. It wasn’t the consuming passion of bringing characters to life or trying to shape a paragraph to fit just so. It was something more mechanical, more forced. It was something I did to keep the motor from freezing up.

Now that time is past. I am back in a home with my family and I feel a sense of my work returning to me. I see chapters flowing before me. I hear the patter of little and not so little feet as the characters creep back on stage and begin to utter bits of dialogue.

It isn’t perfectly clear yet, but it’s coming. With each box I unpack (both in the real world and in my mind), I get a bit closer.

What this tells me is something I already knew: home is where the writer’s heart lives.

Writing is a solitary art, occasionally communal but really something you do alone. Living is not, at least for me.

Life is busy and filled with distractions, but at the same time it is the distraction of life that helps to create determination in the writer. The consuming drive to write flows from the absence of time in which to accomplish it. Yes, this is a paradox but we’re talking about art here. Art is a paradox in and of itself. We do not need art to survive, but we need it to live.

But there is more, because a life lived is a something from which you derive pleasure in the distractions and here in the nooks and crannies of crashing priorities and schedules and telling bedtime stories and washing dishes and holding hands and yelling and eating dinner together and watching children grow and lives unfold… Here is where you find creativity. It seeps out of the cracks. It comes in a rush. It says, “You have more to give.”

Maybe it doesn’t work this way for everyone, but I have a suspicion that it works this way for more people than not. I think this is one reason that artists in later years produce less work. They are isolated from their creativity by the very success it creates because their lives become less cluttered with the actual art of living.

This is a little heady, I know. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m sort of wallowing in the euphoria of being Home.

Where does your Writer’s Heart live?