A glimpse at my muses, and I'm not a whole human being if I can't (every now and then) get some writing done.

I can never quite shake the guilt when I write my own stories.  There are so many other things that I'm supposed to do, so many promises made, so many clients, asking.  But I also know that I can't go more than a few weeks at a time without at least checking in on my characters, their city, their story in progress.  I feel physically ill when too much not-writing has gone on.  I have a hard time with purpose.

Today, with the rain and the dark, with Christmas done and the next big cooking event a day or two off, I walked past the piles of others' books that have accumulated here the past few weeks, ignored client work, didn't dust, and slipped inside my office.  My muses live here—a fabric doll from Asheville, a mask from San Miguel, a collection of painted faces from Venice, an African giraffe, an old spinning wheel, my books of poems, a box from Tamra.  My Florence novel, half written in a fury since October, has been frozen on my desktop since early December. 

The moment I reentered that fictional space, my heart stopped doing that anxious amusement-park thing that it does.  I didn't write much; I couldn't.  I remembered, however.  That was enough.