Sitting and staring at a blank computer screen, waiting for the sleeping muse to awaken; that’s the 21st century version of a writer gazing languidly at a blank sheet of paper in the typewriter. And it’s how I spent at least an hour of my time last evening. I wouldn’t call it writer’s block because, apparently, I don’t believe in it. From “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” (8763 Wonderland):

Trace stopped typing and stared blankly at the computer monitor. The Dan Knight stories were beginning to make him feel fragmented.

Dan Knight was Trace’s fictional alter ego. Trace began writing the stories six months prior, as a tool to mitigate the creative silences between magazine and documentary assignments. In the freelance word such work is called “writing on spec” – writing on the speculation that one just might have a final product worth selling.

After writing ten Dan Knight stories Trace found a market for the pieces with Slumming Angel Press, a San Francisco imprint that published a quarterly anthology of modern and reissued pulp fiction shorts. Slumming Angel only paid ten cents a word and three comp copies of the magazine but a dollar is a dollar and a clip is another notch in the headboard.

Trace lit a Marlboro and boiled water in the microwave for instant coffee. One hundred words away from completing the new Dan Knight tale and he was stuck. It wasn’t writers block. Trace didn’t believe in that bullshit.

Between my work for Pop Matters and creative decisions to wrestle with for Trace Publications, I just cannot seem to dredge up any creative fiction of late and it’s … well, it’s frustrating. Compounding the matter, of course, is a fair amount of anxiety and stop and go visits from the Black Dog produced by lingering economic pressures, fallout from my mother’s passing three months ago, personal health issues, and just a general sense of unease about the state of the world right now. Last week’s computer malfunction issues and the grand larceny of $1200 from my bank account most certainly did nothing to elevate my spirits.

I don’t know why I am sharing this with my visitors here, other than to assure you that sometime soon the train will get back on the track at Carver’s Dog.

As Thanksgiving approaches, Miss L and I are grateful for having our own roof over our heads and for the fact that for the first time in years we get to celebrate the holiday in our own apartment instead of at a casino (where my mom wanted to go last year) or a cheap residential hotel restaurant.

Yeah. There is that.