Pulling Teeth

Writing has been like pulling teeth for me these last few weeks, as evidenced by the dearth of posts on this blog. Life is full and busy, I just haven’t been inspired to write about it. This is not so much writer’s block, as I have numerous ideas for topics I want to write about; it is more like lack of writer’s discipline—an inadequate supply of “bum glue”, as author Elizabeth George phrases it.

This is not a new problem for me. Writing has always been something I have done in waves: big output followed by long periods of not writing at all. When I started the blog a little over a year ago, one of my reasons was to create a tool that would improve my discipline about writing. And it has definitely done that. In the first year, I pretty consistently posted two to three times per week. For the last month or two, though, I seem to have hit a trough.

Recently I read that there are now estimated to be over 77 million blogs on the internet. When I first started there were around 40 million. With such an explosion of blogs, there is plenty out there to read. Way more than most people have time for. To those of you who are loyal Tundra Medicine Dreams readers, thank you. You certainly have plenty to choose from, and I am honored that you choose to read my work. To those of you who are also commenters, thank you even more! Like all bloggers, I love comments. The great beauty of this format of publication is the ability of the writer to interact with his or her audience. That alone is a powerful motivator to keep writing.

I never intended to take a blog vacation, and that is not what I am calling this current phase. I’m thinking of it more like the trough before the next wave, which will come. In the meantime, my creative writing mind is traveling more often to the fantasyland where my first novel is gestating. It, too, is about life in Alaska.

More as it comes.