Up up until two years ago I wrote at night.  After dinner and dishes were done, I’d make a cup of tea, settle in with the laptop, and turn on the music.  I have a collection of writing music that includes oldies, folk music, and soundtracks.  Loreena McKennitt, Lisa Gerrard, Wicked Tinkers (for the action sequences), music from movies such as The Waterhorse and A Thousand Roads.  But two years ago all that quit working (see the Fallout post). 

When you research writing exercises someone always suggests trying a new writing venue, like if you normally write someplace quiet, try someplace noisy.  Well, sorry, but I scoffed.  Until I started restoring a tiny cabin I’d lived in many years ago.  Rustic, with no running water or electricity, it’s surrounded by forest, with a nearby salmon-bearing stream.   As part of the restoration, I moved in a stray cat with a kitten in order to reduce the mouse population.  I’ve always been a dog person, but found myself worrying about the cats getting lonely at night.  So I’d walk through the woods with my flashlight to sit with them for a while.  Then I decided it was stupid to waste flashlight batteries and lit the old kerosene lanterns.  Then I decided since I was just sitting down there doing nothing, maybe I could write something short.  No laptop, no music, not even much light.  Plus a kitten sitting on my shoulder and a cat sitting on the paper.  Why is it cats sit on writing anyway?

I guess that writing exercise hangs around because there’s truth in it after all.

So what is your perfect writing/creating environment, and have you ever taken up the challenge of trying something the polar opposite?  I’ll confess, there’s something about the slower pace and more intimate connection with words through paper and pen that I’ve missed.  And there’s something to be said for the warm gold circle of a lantern.  Except for this moment.  The cat just singed her tail on the glass chimney.

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?