Now and then, when you’re a writer, you’ll hit a patch of silence. Sometimes to be fair, months or years of silence.

And when I do it, every time, even after 40 years of this, I’m terrified the writing isn’t going to come back, the words aren’t going to flow, that something is gone, something is irrevocably broken.

Can it be?

I don’t know. I’ve had friends say they hit the end of writing. They still have stories and ideas come to them, but no longer can write. And maybe one day it will happen to me. Who knows?

However so far every time it happens, it’s because I’m ill. And once, because I was extremely burned out.

But mostly it’s because I’m ill. This last month has been difficult. I couldn’t write the stories that are almost finished. I couldn’t work on Orphans of the Stars. I couldn’t pretty much do much of anything, not even write songs for the continuing sound track.

I’m– I won’t say I’m still sick. I kind of am not, but the cough lingers. And yesterday I felt like I couldn’t wake up all day. So I was dragging and cranky.

And then today…. Today the damn broke. I’m still not well, but I can write.

Songs and a chapter flowed out.

And… I think they’re improved for the silence, though I don’t think it was that kind of silence. But obviously I’ve been turning things in my mind, and it made everything deeper and more powerful.

So–

There might come a time when the silence goes on and on. I hope not. I hope I die with my hands on the keyboard, having just finished a great novel.

But maybe like my older friends I’ll have a year or two of silence at the end.

It’s possible.

It might come.

But not today.