I’ve been more or less dead for the past couple months. The chill is starting to fade, and I’m making my way back to the land of the living. (I think. Every now and then, zombies reach out of the ground and try to drag me back under, but I’m

I want to put out a huge thank you to the rest of the Novelty Girls for their understanding over the past couple months. Let’s just say that drama and stress reached new levels I didn’t even think possible. Breaking up with my abusive ex and the fallout thereafter was less stressful.
Right, so. The last six months have been spent mostly in a daze. With all of the real life and relationship crap going on (and backstabbing friends, that’s always a fun one), I haven’t done much writing. OK. That’s an understatement. I think I’ve written maybe 10k in the past six months. For comparison, I normally write about 10k per month on a bad month.

Yeah.

I was talking with another writer about Not Writing. She’s been under a lot of stress herself lately and feels apathetic about the book she’s working on — but she’s afraid that if she takes a break, she won’t come back to it.

I know that fear.

When I was younger, I didn’t think that any of this could happen to me. In 2002, I wrote three novels, a novella, and several short pieces. I didn’t think that I could not write. I didn’t think anything would ever get between me and my writing.

The last few years shattered that arrogant assumption.

I’ve been spiraling further down, sinking deeper and deeper, to the point that most of this year, I haven’t cared about writing at all. I was content to handle day-to-day monotonous shit, play computer games, watch movies and TV, read, and just not give a damn about writing.

Oh, I struggled. Especially when people around me were saying, “You should write” or variants thereof. They meant well, but sometimes pushing is the wrong thing to do. The more I fought, the more apathetic I became. Every time I sat down at the keyboard to get my words in, it felt like dragging my heels to a shit job that I couldn’t wait to quit.

It shouldn’t be that way.

Finally, I stopped trying.

A friend of mine said something very wise to me a long time ago, that continually comes back to me. Paraphrased, because I don’t recall the exact wording: “Sometimes you have to give up everything in order to gain everything.”

Slowly, I found myself starting to want to write again. After far too long with no new ideas, one came to mind for a short story. I started writing… and for the first time in months, enjoyed the act of writing.

I have some modicum of a plan. I’m not out of the woods yet. I feel like a sick woman afraid of relapsing.

But I’ve come this far, and I know if I do fall back… I’ll make it out again.

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