From the Ashes...

Ah, the familiar fragrance of Autumn: the clean, crisp tang of fresh, chill air, the pungent scent of woodsmoke curling from my neighbor's chimney, the fruity, cinnamon spice of hot apple crumble... and the horrendous stench of my heater being turned on for the first time this season. Ugh!

Imagine, if you will, the olfactory result of burning away a year's worth of dust and rust and cobwebs within the flames of the furnace. Throw a few desiccated corpses of unfortunate insects upon the pyre and the malodorous blend is complete.

After a particularly miserable Summer, the hottest and driest that I can remember, the weather here has been pleasantly temperate for the past few weeks. Those few leaves still clinging tenaciously to parched branches eventually began to turn gold and orange and crimson and the breeze blew cool while the sun stayed warm. It has been a glorious reprieve in which I have reveled. 

Then, literally overnight, our temperature dropped from 80 degrees on Friday afternoon to 40 degrees Saturday morning, prompting my husband to switch on the heater. Instead of waking up to the comforting aroma of fresh brewing coffee, I woke to the aforementioned acrid stench. I hate this smell! It chokes me and nauseates me and I dread it every year. But I also realize that it's a necessary part of the transition, especially if I don't want to freeze to death over the course of the Winter.

The point to this rambling diatribe? The experience caused me to reflect on the correlation between the heater and my writing career. For the past decade, my writing skills have been gathering dust and cobwebs from disuse. My career has been in limbo, stalled by a series of tragic events and the subsequent onset of psychological, emotional and physical struggles. Rather than putting pen to paper and writing my way through these obstacles the way we, as writers, are taught to do, I allowed my writing voice to go dormant and my skills to stagnate.  

Then, a few months ago, a strange thing began to happen. I began to reconnect with old friends I'd lost contact with over the years. Friends from high school that I hadn't seen or spoken to in decades, and the beloved comrades of the younger, wilder hell-raising phase of my life, as well as my writer and editor and publisher friends from back in the day when I was still publishing Bloodreams.

Before I knew it, long forgotten embers began to smolder. A tiny flame began to flicker and grow. My creative fire was stoked. Wonder of wonders, I gradually began to think like a writer again for the first time in years. Characters, settings, situations began to tease the edges of my consciousness. I heard dialog whispering in my head. I fell in love with words all over again. Narrative description toyed with my thoughts as I observed the world around me. I dug through my old files and unearthed stories I'd started and never finished, book projects I'd abandoned, and I re-read my published stories, essays and articles. I was even pleasantly surprised to find that they weren't as bad as I remembered them to be.

So, I sat down and began to write again and quickly came to a disappointing realization. Very much like the fetor from the burning debris in my furnace, my writing attempts stink at the moment. But, also like the current stench permeating my house, I'm hoping this is only a temporary condition. Before my writing can improve, I must first knock the rust off my mental hinges and burn away the dust and cobwebs that have accumulated in my creative furnace. Once all the junk has burned away, my hope is for this reek to give way to an aroma of comfort and warmth and home.

Beginning this blog is only the first step toward that goal. Now, I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and pray I don't stumble.

Baby steps, I tell myself. Baby steps.