As I sat down to write my first blog post, the words just wouldn't come to me, as if ghosts from another world with no intention to burden themselves with this one, and I realized then that something was broken. Not my fingers, nor the tendons in my wrist, nor the speckled letters on my worn out keys. It was me. The writer. I was broken, in every way. My heart, my soul, my body and mind. All broken. I'd left everything on the pages of Mojave Run. There was nothing left to give. There's a strange thing that happens when writing fiction: you die a thousand deaths before returning from that other world. With each rebirth, you lose a part of yourself. Never the same. Never whole. Never fully invested in this world, but caught between two: the world we accept as reality, and the world where dreams are more real than life itself. A writer becomes that other world. He becomes his characters. He feels what they feel, he loves what they love, and he loses it all as they do, and then he hates and hurts and suffers right along with them, never able to separate his own tragedies from theirs. It takes a mighty toll, especially after a decade of being lost in it. 

     As I struggled to find the words, I accepted that the words had been lost, left somewhere in the tormenting realms of my twisted imagination. Lost for now, but not forever. The only words that came to me were the cryptic ones in the poem I've posted below. They perfectly express the cycle of torment that a writer must endure. A torment he can never escape. Writing isn't a choice, after all. It's an obligation. Something you have to do. Perhaps a gift, which comes with a hefty price to pay. It's an exploration of the soul, Not of the writer's, but of humankind. A battle between the light and the darkness. A devestating gale of triumph and tragedy. A lustful dance of the chaos that kills and the calm that tricks us into believing there's nothing wrong. Writers strive to make sense of their world. A world that often seems to make no sense at all. Writing is a balancing act that can drive one to the brink of insanity. I've been to the edge of it. I've gone to the darkest depths of my heart, mind and soul, and now I'm back. I just need a little time to truly return. One must be lost to ultimately be found. This is truest of writers. They must lose themselves entirely to find themselves again.