Confession

I am a Catholic through and through. And every good Catholic knows that confession is good for the soul.

If not the career.

I confess that I have not written anything of substance since Nov 30. At that time I was working on a novel (I didn’t get to 50,000 words this year) but the whole thing stalled. And the stalling of the novel meant that my enthusiasm for writing waned.

I’ve been through this before. It’s not writer’s block so much as it is writer’s fatigue.

Last year I wrote a whole novel and half of another one. I wrote four short stories, several essays, six songs, some poems, and a grocery list or two. The only regular writing I do is my daily journal, which I somehow look forward to after my morning toast and coffee.

I can’t tell you why. I suppose it’s like being married to the same muse for 40 years. In year One of the relationship, you can’t wait to get to the keyboard and write. In Year Ten, you’re still interested even though you know your girl’s curves pretty well by then. But now we’re in Year Fifty Nine, and I think that the muse is as uninterested in me as I am in her.

Oh, from time to time we flirt with each other. But that old spark is hard to ignite.

I’ve been through this before. I get tired of writing (mostly after a hard sprint to finish a novel) and the well is bone dry. I keep throwing the bucket down there. The bucket hits bottom with an annoying clack. Nothing down there to draw.

I am 69 years old, and the word is that this is around the time in a writer’s life when things get scarce. This worries me. I have at least 8 unfinished projects. Can’t I get my butt working on one of them?

Of course, it could be that next week I get ahold of something wonderful and off I go to the races. Or at least to the cliches.

In the meantime, I wonder what’s on TV?