Without sharing too much of the muck, I confess to loosing my drive to write. You know how when hormone levels change in women after they’ve given childbirth a lot of women end up in postpartum depression? Well, I didn’t give birth. BUT, I did suffer from pineal gland dysfunction that caused my thyroid to go sluggish on me, ultimately causing my hormone levels and the chemicals in my brain to take a dive. In simple terms – I have been depressed.

The amazing thing to me is watching how this affected my writing. Not only could I not stand to write, I couldn’t handle reading about writing. I suppose it’s the pain of knowing what I want, but not being able to squeeze out a single word. Such a dark place to be. I’m better now.  Not healed yet, that will take time.  I was angry for awhile, too. I’d been through all this before and after six months of blissful health, thought we had kicked it. Ha-ha, the joke was on me.

But there is good news.

Like Friedrich Nietzsche said, ”Ideas come when they want, not when I want.” Slowly ideas have been coming to me at odd places and I’ve become somewhat.. weird… as I whip out my little writing book and jot them down.   I’ve discovered that I need to let my protagonist share the wealth of experiences time traveling.  Relationships weren’t what I thought they were.  New twists were revealed.   But the super great news is, I had an asthma attack.  One that sent me to the couch for three days with a heated rice pack on my chest. Talking made the coughs worsen, so I pretty much watched Netflix for a few days while I let electronics keep my homeschool going.   Farscape, to be precise.

At the beginning of season 4, I had an epiphany.

“The person who can combine frames of reference and draw connections between ostensibly unrelated points of view is likely to be the one who makes the creative breakthrough” ~ Denise Shekerjian

My story deepened in an instant. My characters grew in depth.  The conflict no longer feels forced to me – it flows naturally.  I turned off the TV, and fired up the laptop. Images in the form of words now fly into a stream of manuscript. Dialogue changes.  More wit and personality goes into the effort.  Yes, there will be rewrites and frutration points.  I don’t care.  That’s a part of the process, and all with ambitions to be published have to accept it.  The point is….

I feel alive.

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