Dear friends, it’s been quite a while since I wrote anything here. Continuous upheavals in my official and personal life have kept me busy… I also found that I could not find the passion to put up my weekly (well, off late, fortnightly) babble here. Initially it had me worried. Was I losing my writing groove?
Then a couple of days ago, it happened – after a gap of many years, I wrote a story! Or it would be more correct to say that the story finally found a way to escape from whatever dark place it was holed up in. It just took hold of my hand, jumped into my pen, and forced me to stay on the page until it had squeezed itself out.
I suddenly realised that all this rigmarole of writing a blog was a way my hesitant mind had found to keep me from writing stories. It is my calling: but fear of failure was keeping me away. In the parlance of the Hero’s Journey, I was refusing my call to adventure.
But now it’s no longer possible. The story has me by the balls and I have to heed it. It is out there in limbo, waiting for the conduit to open – and I am it. The doorway for the stories to flow out.
So friends, it’s goodbye for the time being. I feel that I will return to this space sometime in the future, but when? I can’t tell.
Dear traveller on the web, if you come here, tarry awhile. Feel free to go through my posts, comment, say hi… I will visit once in a while to see what’s happening. But most of the time, I will be in another sort of sacred space – the inner reaches where stories are born.
Au revior!
Sacred Space 
I am not going to ‘like’ this post. As one who has both written blogs and followed them for a long time I can’t read it and not be sad. And I think you should be more positive about what you have been doing on your blog. It’s writing. There are great blogs and great short stories. You write well on your blog and I hope you do the same in your stories.
Maybe because I wrote four books (back when that sort of meant something) before I started keeping blogs I did not feel the need to be disdainful towards them. Indeed occasionally friends would ask if I was writing still – even though they knew I was writing all the time but it didn’t count for them. It counts for me! The writing counts. The reading of others’ counts. Don’t diminish the meaning for either you as writer or me as reader.
And I can’t resist asking…does this mean goodreads is getting the flick too? Or is that an essential publicity tool these days for writers?
Anyway….I counter au revoir with bonne chance!
Cathy – such a passionate and angry post! I never thought you cared so much for what I shared here! Thanks.
But you do me a disservice. I am not disdainful towards anything I write here! In fact, I love each of my posts. But of late, the passion has been drying up, and I have been finding it difficult to create meaningful posts. If you look at my activity over the last six months, you will see how sparse the activity has been.
There are these stories out there. I need to write them, if only for myself. (Publication is the furthest thing in my mind now, let me tell you!) My muses are pulling me in that direction, and I have to obey them.
To add – I will be there on GR. Not for publicity, but for the great atmosphere friends like you create. I am slowly moving out of all other social media like FB.
Please bear with me while I grapple with my creative demons!
Very wise I imagine! I didn’t really mean to sound angry, but passionate yes! I love what I do on my blogs, they give me complete freedom to write how I want to, often experimenting, or writing about things that I find interesting but perhaps nobody else in the world ever will. They give the possibility of constant practising of one’s writing. So, I see a lot in favour of them. I also love the concept of blogs because they are individual, unique, and there are truly amazing ones to be found.
Having said all that, I certainly don’t think they are the be all and end all. It’s fantastic if you have an urge to write other things, and I do hope that you will occasionally let us know how that is going.
Actually, you are right, a bit angry, but only with people in general who think that writing is something quite limited in its nature. These days there are so many wonderful ways of writing that don’t fit into a ‘book’.
With the very best wishes!
I am currently struggling with a lot of things in life. Moving out of a salaried job into freelancing is one. Trying to revive my storytelling career is another.
I have trouble sleeping nowadays: I woke up at 2:45 A. M., couldn’t sleep, and decided to check out my site and your comment hit me in the face. 😉 Here was I, getting properly ticked off for my pretensions! So I felt I had to make myself clear.
Now what it means is that I am wide awake at 4:15 in the morning, sitting with a cup of hot coffee, reading a book on literary criticism. A story is taking shape in my mind – I might write it.
No, no, no!! I was not suggesting in any way that you have pretensions. Anybody who writes a blog such as yours is obviously a capable writer and short stories is an obvious place to develop your talents! Mostly I keep my writing to myself and so I totally understand the idea of needing to do it even if nobody else ever sees it….but I hope we do.
Good luck in your creative writing endeavor. I’m glad you found your space.
Thank you. I am still struggling to find my bliss, but I hope to reach there eventually.