For those who don’t read my blog, Holly Lisle, occasional commenter here left us on August 27.

I’d noticed silence from her or lack of answer to my last two emails, but I’ll be honest, I assumed it was an email problem. I sometimes forgot her “chatting email” and sent emails to her “writing program” emails, which she sometimes didn’t check, or checked when she was dealing with courses and tabbed to answer me later, then forgot. We’d had an interruption of communication for six months because of that before.

I figured it was that or she was so deep in the novels she was writing that she’d forgotten to answer.

Our friendship — online — such as it was was punctuated with deep silences as one or the other of us went head down on a book.

We’d started talking when both of us were having trouble motivating ourselves to write, but we were both recovering. I hadn’t yet had the courage to start on this novel. It’s sad. I was kind of hoping Holly would be one of the first readers.

She on the other hand was very excited about her multi-novel project. She was happy and interested. Which honestly, if you choose to go, go with your hands on the keyboard.

While I was looking for Holly’s obituary, after finding out she had died, I came across a blog post she wrote (Which I just tried to find again and can’t find) speaking of how important it is for writers to write books that are uniquely theirs.

It was like her last gift to me, because it– I wish I’d seen it three years or so ago, because–

Well, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get over my bad case of the burnout and failing. And what I will say is that writing the novel I’ve been avoiding since I was 14 is finally helping.

I don’t know if it’s the fact I’m doing the unthinkable under trad pub, or simply writing something I first dreamed up when I was very young for fun, or–

I don’t know, but I feel like it’s restoring parts of my mind and…. soul? that I thought were dead forever.

So, Holly was right. And even if this doesn’t sell a single copy, it’s worth writing.

Now, if the world could stop collapsing around me, I could finish the last half dozen chapters and be done!

Before something else happens.