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It is a gorgeous day outside after a very long, very cold, very snowy winter. I’ve had a lot of disruptions today, so I got no pages done this morning. Normally, at the beginning of a book I’d be done for the day and be able to go out and enjoy all this warm sunshine. But I have no pages, and I owe myself pages. But sometimes it feels like I’ve spent most of my life watching beautiful days pass by my windows while I played with my imaginary friends. Tomorrow is supposed to be colder, rainy, and not pretty. I want to go outside and enjoy the day not sit here in my office and work. I want to play. Oddly, I am only now learning how to truly play. The test now is to find a balance between this new play and the old work ethic.

I think one of the reasons I resisted playing for so long was a fear that it would damage my work ethic, my productivity. But, it’s more than that, I sat down at the other desk where I sat to write the last four books, and it still hurts. I still feel that soft, rolling panic of the insane deadlines I’ve survived in the last twelve months. It was a wonderful year, and a terrible year. We lost people we loved some through death, and some through just deciding that they would no longer be who they said they were. Death is not the only way to lose someone, it just seems more final. I sat down at the other desk, opened the file which I wrote 18 pages of on the plane coming back from Paris. I have a good start, a good scene, exciting action, and the panic came. It’s a beautiful day, and I’m not ready to work. My muse and I are still hurt. It’s the only word I have for it.

Paris filled us up again, thus the 18 pages, but also I was riding the fear of my flying phobia. Anger, rage, fear, even sorrow, translates into energy for me, and I most often pour that energy onto the page. But even Paris, that lovely city, did not heal all wounds. I didn’t understand until I sat down today to try and make myself get back up on that bucking bronco that had become my schedule, that I’m afraid to get back on the horse. I don’t wanna, not yet, not yet. It’s like being forced to ride again when your arm is still in a cast from where it bucked you off last time. No, not bucked me off, because I stayed and broke that damn horse. I tamed it, bridled it, made my deadline again and again last year, hell, the last two years. I rode, and rode well, but like all big, powerful beasts it didn’t go quietly, and in the end it pressed me against the fence rails and busted through them covering us in wood and splinters and nails, and when I had mastered it, brought the beast panting and head hung down, broken, something in me, on me, broke, too.

I am not ready to write again. I am not ready to get back up on another charging, snorting, beast. It prances before me black coat shining in the sun, tossing it’s head so it’s midnight mane flares around the muscular arch of the neck. It’s nostrils flare scenting my fear. It’s eyes show white. It’s hooves pawing at the dirt, nervous, warning, all it’s body language saying, “Come closer and I will kick you. I will kill you, because I’m scared of you, and I will not be ridden.” For some reason it has one white hoof, pawing the dry dirt, that seems important, some symbol, but I don’t know why, or what. I just know that I do not want to sling my leg over the back of the midnight steed. I fought the last one, bay coated, like rich wood polished and gleaming in the sun. It’s gone off to all of you so you can enjoy it’s story, but now here’s another one, and I am not ready yet. I didn’t realize that I was still heavy with bandages and wounds. I thought I was well, healed in the chilly air of a Parisian spring, but it is not so. I am hurt. My muse stares at me, and looks at the great black, beast, and with the raise of an eyebrow says, “You’re joking, right? This one, this soon, we’re not well.” She’s right. She’s so right.

I can either go out into the sunlight and give up all pretense of working today, but if I do, then the beast will have won, and I’ll be more afraid tomorrow. Fear grows if you feed it, and cowardice feeds it. I will give myself a few minutes to sit in the sun and weep, and then I will come back and I will mount the beast. I will let it shake and batter me, until my teeth ache in my head, and I feel my spine will snap from holding onto all that muscled death, because make no mistake it will kill you if it can. Maybe not a death of flesh and blood, but I am hurt. I’m going to sit on the patio in the sunshine, and unbandage some of the wounds. Maybe what they need is a little air.