Coming Back to Writing

I wrote a story yesterday.

Not a big deal, certainly, but the feeling was wonderful. Why? Because I hadn't written anything for a few months.

Clarification: I hadn't written any fiction for a few months. I've written, of course. Blogs, emails, and my day job is as an editor, so I am constantly immersed in words, tinkering with sentences. But writing fiction is something else entirely. The other things can play into it, but there's nothing quite like writing fiction. That is what I love.

And I hadn't written any fiction in almost three months. I had good reasons, of course. Busy at work, health problems, and a new baby to add to my three other kids. Busy.

And I'm fine with such breaks. Some writers beat themselves up over these hiatuses. Must write! Must write! But I give myself permission, from time to time, to take a break. Sometimes life calls on you to focus on other things. Like, you know, living. And I think this permission makes it easier to come back to writing. I don't stress about it. Yes, sometimes it takes a bit of discipline to sit back down at the computer, to re-establish habits that have gotten soft and hazy.

But really, if you're a writer, you'll be callled back to the computer. A story will become real inside your head, the words itching at your skull, looking for cracks and crevices to escape through. Something will compel you to return.

And there's something delicious about coming back to writing. The fingers tapping the keys, the words flowing. And flow is just what it is, in the words of modern psychology. In sports it's called being in the zone. The rest of the world falls away. There's a pureness of focus, a sense of the words, the story, passing through you, rather than being created by you. This is where the idea of the muse comes from, this sense of flow, when everything inside you is running so smoothly that you forget these things are there and the words simply come.

I wrote a story yesterday.

Not a big thing, surely. But it is a good thing.