***RED ALERT! DON CRASH HELMETS! PERSONAL DATA AHEAD***

Next week and the week after, I shall Sequester myself at a Secret Locale for my Second Annual Writer’s Retreat. (This means no Morgan posts for those two weeks. I have some great stuff planned, though, for when I get back…tee hee) My primary goals for this retreat are to finish revisions for Feral Sapiens for Tor, and if there is time, to make further progress on a short story I started a while back (about which more anon).

Writing never used to come hard for me, but it does now.

Writing requires creating a space for yourself as a writer. You have to be willing to suck it up, say no to all the other important things in your life clamoring for attention (work, family, friends, chores and other responsibilities, often even sleep). You must tune them all out. Forget about paying the bills, getting the laundry done, forget how tired you are and stop worrying about how you are going to meet that work deadline, ignore what’s going to happen next week, month, year. You tune out the noise, sink into a private expanse that’s all about make-believe. The outer world ceases to exist.

That act of shutting everything else out used to come easy for me. I love the act of creation. But I spoiled it for myself, by going to work as an engineering consultant in the early ‘oughts.

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