Crawling Back

Back in the dark ages of time and mist and memory, when I was a child being taught how to write a proper letter, I was instructed never to begin a letter to a friend with an apology for not having corresponded sooner or regularly.

That training is careening within my mind now, telling me to plunge into this post without apology or explanation. As John Wayne’s character Nathan Brittles says in the film SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, “Never apologize, mister! It’s a sign of weakness.”

Today, however, I’m less concerned with appearing weak than with being courteous. Therefore, I will say to those of you who have followed this blog in the past and may still retain some vestigial interest in it, Please forgive me for vanishing off the planet.

Life happens.

Sometimes we capsize and drown. Sometimes we capsize yet swim to shore and return.

That sounds very dramatic and mysterious. I think in the blogging universe, the explanation is more likely to be something along the lines of, I ran out of anything to say.

Choose whichever of these reasons appeals to you, and we’ll delve no deeper than that.

Years ago, Steven Pressfield wrote a small book entitled THE WAR OF ART. It deals with the various obstacles and blockages writers encounter when working on stories. Some of his insights are very sound. What has always stayed with me is his point about how the obstructive force he calls Resistance is strongest when something most needs to be done. And while this can sound flaky, weird, and downright woo-woo, it seems to be true.

I am currently working on another writing-technique book–this time about revision methods. Having finally gained the time and opportunity to focus on and complete it, I have hit every possible interruption and disruption imaginable, including a mislaid reference that will NOT turn up no matter how hard I search. Thanks to Pressfield, I can smile and shrug it off. Knowing that Resistance is trying super-hard to stop me is reassuring because it means this project is very worthwhile. (Resistance has even been working to stop resumption of this blog.)

However, being both resourceful and in possession of a creative mind, I am bypassing the temperamental meltdown that my imagination wants me to have so it needn’t work or produce pages. Instead, I have found another source for the mislaid reference. I will cope with the malfunctioning stapler, the lost password, the wonky computer mouse, the bidding war on eBay, the telemarketing calls invading my home office phone, and the lure of playing Word Crush on my cell phone, and I will forge onward. My imagination WILL have to work today and on subsequent days.

This blog post is insubstantial, but it is a post. I have managed to eek out nearly 500 words in triumph about generating the missing materials needed to resume my book. Meanwhile, here is resurrection, and subsequent posts will be better.