Reports of my being locked down in total writer's block are not. To those of you who periodically tuned in to my rambling journals, and may have wondered where I went - well, I have gone and come back, gone and come back, and all during that time stared at the blank computer screen willing that words would might magically appear. No mystery elves appeared in the night to take over the writing chores; no muse whispered in my ear. So I abandoned writing for other diversions for a while, and felt guilty as the days went by.

I began to worry that I had written everything that I was ever going to write. The strange conversations going on in my head (my source of inspiration) had fallen silent. All things seemed drab and uninteresting from a writer's point of view. Conversely, life itself was busy but extremely enjoyable. I began to entertain the thought that I was not destined to be a writer of any sort - that I didn't need the extra hassle of living life and recording it also.

(A sure sign of a writer in writer's block is when they begin to write about their writing - maybe it is equivalent to an artist who paints self-portraits, I don't know.)

The wellspring of my writing had always come from some noticed absurdity in life. Instead of seeing things in a graduating scale of sublime to ridiculous, I sought out what I thought of as 'sublimely ridiculous' (or ridiculously sublime - you can have it both ways, I suppose). It may not show up in the finished product, but as a launch pad, it was the only thing that inspired me to pursue a subject - to 'what if' it to death, until I had the framework for a story or essay.

The trouble was that nothing seemed that interesting. The other day a friend posed a question about automobile tires. If tires wear out after so many miles, and they lose their tread, what happens to all that rubber? With so many cars on the road, it would seem like there should be a layer of rubber like heavy snowfall in January. All I could do was shrug my shoulders. There's probably a government study that has spent millions of dollars to answer this very question, but to me, it just wasn't interesting enough to pursue.

Even the current political climate raised no eyebrows. If you are still a fan of George W. Bush after the last five years, then there's really nothing I can say to change your mind (God help you). Iraq, Abramoff... even Cheney shooting lawyers in Texas seems barren of possibilities for insightful commentary. Maybe it's all just too absurd.

But there were successes last year also, and I hold onto them like a candle in the dark. Two pieces of mine were published, one of them "Digging Holes" which can be read right here on the site under my deviations. The other was a short piece of fiction entitled "Pitching Change", which won second place in the Writing on Walls anthology contest sponsored by the Storyteller Magazine. (For those of you who might be interested, [link] is the home page of the magazine, and the anthology is for sale from that site)

Publishing those two pieces fulfilled the goal I had for last year, and I had hoped to increase that by at least one this year. There's still a lot of time left, and I am beginning to feel faint stirrings of the muse. Where does all that rubber go? What stories lurk behind the random tire marks that start at the center of the highway and skid off onto the shoulder? How does Google pick the ads that populate the banner above my deviant art homepage? Especially when I've never expressed any interest in owning land in Costa Rica, or purchasing garden gnomes or fairies? Who does buy garden gnomes anyhow? If I skidded off the road because of an invisible layer of worn out rubber, and landed in someone's garden, what then?

Enquiring minds want to know.