The Well’s Gone Dry

Or maybe it’s just frozen over. It was a whopping 8ºF at my house this morning about 6 o’clock.

But the point is, I haven’t been able to think of anything to say here for days. Maybe November and NaNoWriMo just drained me, but even during NaNo I was blogging and it almost seemed like I had more to say than usual. Perhaps the lesson here is the more I write, the more I can write. So to try to get the ball rolling again, I decided to fall back on that time-tested method of drawing a Tarot card and see if that sparks something. Sitting at my desk at work it was hard to shuffle my deck surreptitiously so I had to settle for a few hand over hand passes, when out fell

the Page of Swords. Pages are young people, usually messengers of some kind or another. As he grips his sword in two hands, is he in a defensive stance, or is he offering a challenge? I think I’m feeling challenged here. I think this little bugger, whoever he is, thinks he has a better idea and is defying me to prove him wrong. Well, we’ll just have to see about that then, won’t we?

It’s not as if I don’t have enough stories going on. I’ve also been looking around for markets to submit to, so I’ve dredged up a couple that I want to submit short stories to for anthologies that are coming up. I’m at a point where I feel I need to actually write and submit something, or all I’m doing is writing these stories that are never going to go anywhere and what’s the point of that? I keep thinking about an interview I saw with Ray Bradbury talking about how many stories he submitted that were rejected when he was young, and how awful he finally realized those stories were although he couldn’t see it at the time. I want to start that process of sending stuff out, even if it gets rejected, because somehow that feels like an integral part of the process. It’s not so much the concept of ‘paying my dues’ (as they say in show biz) but that with time and the more I write, the better (hopefully) I will get.

I found this on Biddy Tarot and I think it sums up nicely the vibe I’m getting from this card today:

The Page of Swords asks you to embrace a difficult situation and meet its challenge. You could think of these as trials designed to test your mettle. If you accept and prevail, you will become stronger and more resilient. In meeting these challenges, you are encouraged to use the tools of the Swords suit – honesty, reason, integrity, and fortitude.

All righty then. Back to it!