On Blogorrhea (And Its Opposite)

ALTHOUGH I STILL CAN’T SIT for very long, I am also still happy that my seven-year writer’s block has evidently ended (albeit with the death of a close friend). But I will know that it’s really ended when I can start cranking out fiction again.

Fiction doesn’t come easily for me. I am professionally, hands-on trained as a news and features writer. That sort of writing is like assembling a Tinkertoy structure out of fact-pieces and putting them in the proper places. But fiction-writing is like pulling a thick rope out of a dark void and seeing what’s attached.

The fictions I really want to start writing again concern our ol’ pal Prosatio Silban, self-defrocked holyman turned mercenary cook. I know more about cooking now than I did when I last set fingertips to keys in Mr. Prosatio’s direction, and feel a bit more confident about making vivid both of his vocations.

But the ideas, they do not come. (Yet.) As noted above, I’m a composer at the keyboard. It’s how I’ve always operated. However, I need at least a germ of an idea to get the party started — think of it as a critical mass of the prefrontal cortex — and until that happens, it’s going to be a cold day in the Uulian Commonwell. Hope to see you there soon.