Once Upon A Time there was a middle aged, frumpy hippiechick who typed words into a magical black box. Even though she was sitting deep in the beautiful Pineywoods of East Texas, through the wonder of the interwebs, these words flew up and out of the magic box, and wafted all over the world, settling into other magic black boxes and were (mostly) enjoyed by the (tiny) throngs of readers who followed her adventures.
Sometimes her words were humorous and made people laugh, sometimes they were sad and made people cry, alot of the time they were very angry and every so often they were words that get children's mouths washed out with soap.
One day the words stopped coming.
Just like that.
It had happened once before, when her husband was very ill and the words up till then had been all cheerful and humorous. For a long time she didn't feel funny, or happy, or even remotely fine.
She was sad, and worried, and the words were afraid to go near her.
At the time, she was so sad and worried, she didn't even notice.
At the time, she was so sad and worried, once she noticed, she didn't even care.
Now it seemed that the words were afraid again- even the bad ones.
And this time, she did notice, and she did care.
Not that there wasn't anything to write about- they had just had a little road trip and seen and done alot of neat stuff that could've used up some happy traveling words.
They were back at the cancer hospital for scans and rechecks and although her husband's graft looked great, he was still very thin and kind of weak and there was that annoying spot on his neck that refused to heal, so that could've used up some worried anxious words.
She was very tired and had spent the better part of the last few days driving, so that could've used up some exhausted maybe partially garbled up words.
Things at work had been stressful and needlessly awful and that could've used up some angry fed-up words.
The gardens were growing, the puppy was adorable, her son had done fabulously well at his tae kwon do tournament, and her husband was still and would always be her Knight in Shining Armor, so that could've used up some contented grateful words.
And they'd gotten some good news on the New House front- as well as some people who would hopefully fall in love with the Old House- positive and tangible moves forward in a part of their lives that had seemed to be spinning in circles forever, so that could've used up some hopeful cautiously optimistic words.
But instead, she sat at the magic black box and started first one story, then another, then another, and she proclaimed them all Stupid, and hit the Off With Their Heads Delete Key in disgust.
Finally she threw up (her hands in frustration), decided she was just too tired and had too many thoughts swirling around willy nilly hither and yon without any damn semblance of order in her mind causing all the words to scatter and stampede into nonsensical little twitchy clumps, and even though she had promised herself she would write something every few days and it was now beyond that by several days
she gave up.
The End.
I have found (as a writer, although not of words) that when it's gone, it's gone for a reason. That is, I find the dry spells generally tend to be telling me to place my concern and thoughts elsewhere. That, or I just can't afford to have both creativity and real-life in my head at the same time. Useful information? Perhaps not. But at the very least, you're not alone in it. =)
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