After surviving cancer comes what I call radiation fallout.  Prior to that you’ve hunkered down in survival mode, thinking only about the next step in front of you.  But once treatment is over life goes back to normal and that’s the problem.  It’s normal around you, as if everyone breathes in a big sigh of relief before returning to taking you for granted.  But as for yourself, deep inside, ‘normal’ has died.

For me, writing also died.  My oncologist explained it as the creative side of the brain going into deep sleep because so much was expected of the pragmatic, logical side  He said creativity would come back, but had no suggestions about when.

Writing was such an all-encompassing part of me, but now I can’t really say I even miss it.  I mourn being able to lose myself completely in the dream world of a new story, but writing was a lot of work.  As any writer knows.  And yet, there’s a hole I seem to be filling with anger.  And that makes me realize that writing gave me balance, and that needs to return.

That old adage about writing every day is, surprisingly, true.  I’ve gone months now without writing.  Then Susan Schreyer asked me to edit her soon-to-be-published book.  That allowed me to dip back into words again.  And I’ve followed that stream to these little puddles, short postings that don’t say much, but accomplish everything.  There are no new novels on the horizon for me, but maybe one puddle will connect to another, form a trickle that leads to a stream that eventually will float me into the river again.

So what blocks your writing, and what have you done to breach that dam?